You Will Know Me: A Novel

The Knox family's entire life revolves around Devon's gymnastics training. Parents, Katie and Eric, spend every waking moment either working to pay for gymnastics or taking Devon to her countless hours of training. Little brother Drew is dragged along. They have very little life outside the training gym and the other gym families are really the only people they have time to socialize with. The other families are necessarily their friends, but their entire social life. Devon's coach thinks she may even be able to compete in the Olympics. In an attempt to help Devon realize her full potential, Katie and Eric not only sink every penny they have into her training but also, accumulate significant debt. After a mistake at a very important competition and with limited time left before she loses her gymnastics body to puberty, Devon doubles down on her training adding more stress to a household which is already stretched thin. With 6 weeks until the biggest competition of Devon's life and her time as a competitive gymnasts running out, a death within the gym family rocks their world and threatens to ruin their family. Well written, suspenseful and creepy. I liked it but it made me feel really uncomfortable in places, which I think was the authors intent. Worth reading.

With the Olympics going on, I felt it was a just good timing to check out this book, which I purchased on Kindle from a deal found through the Modern Mrs. Darcy daily emails. Megan Abbott is not an author I have heard of before but I found the premise of the story to be interesting. And, again, timely what with the Olympics and all. This is a book with lots of twists, which makes me apprehensive to mention things due to worrying about a spoiler, so I will keep my discussions of specific book topics limited. This story has many parts to it. There is the Knox family- mom Kate, dad Eric, gymnastic prodigy Devon and the sometimes forgotten little brother Drew. All characters were interesting — not just the Knox family — and I found for the various characters to have good voices of their own. I love a good character driven story and I feel like this book had a great start at that and while the character development might not have been successful with each and every character, there were good advancements with some of the characters. Having said that, I did find that, throughout the last 2/3s of the book, I was feeling somewhat lost. You know how when you read a book and you forgot a specific detail — for example, a character shows up and you cannot recall who that person is [this did not happen with this story, just want to clarify — just the best example I could come up with with the feeling I had throughout this story] — and it shows up again and you’re racking your brain trying to recall why this person/detail/etc was important? I felt this throughout the majority of this book. I found that Eric was an interesting character and I wish there had been more development of him, and not just from Katie’s point of view of what was occurring. Once I had finished this book, I had wondered if this would have been improved by having that multiple POV quality. Now, a week or so later, I do not think it would have helped. I now feel that, instead, what this book was lacking, was closure on smaller details. There were so many different aspects of Katie’s past brought up but I never felt like the reason for mentioning those was needed. The only thing that I could come up with was to show how much birth, marriage, children really did change her, though I am not sure how related to the story it really was. I found Devon to be an interesting character and I feel like Megan Abbott did a very good job at giving out details when they were needed. I also found little brother, Drew, to be a fantastic character and wish there had been more about him throughout, instead of just using him as a (basically) plot device to keep the story moving forward. I give this book a 3 star rating overall. I found the premise to be a new take on a genre that (thrillers/mystery) that I love so much and the writing overall was very good. I am excited to read more from Megan Abbott in the future. I will not say that this book is perfect; as I said, there was just something…missing throughout this book that even a week+ later I cannot completely put my finger on. But I enjoyed reading it and found it to be a quick, suck you in read. I enjoy her take on women and find that Katie was a very interesting character who I would enjoy reading more about in the future.

Megan Abbott doesn’t know me, and probably never will. Still, she owes me six hours of restful sleep. They were strange dreams I had last night. Not my routine searching-for-a-place-to-pee or getting-lost-in-a-building or trying-to-impress-my-father frustration scenarios. I shake those off soon as I'm awake and on my way to the bathroom. No sir/ma'am. These things last night were unfamiliar, deeply discomfiting, clinging dream fragments. Semi-conscious glimpses of something vaguely menacing. I can't recall any particulars, but whenever I woke, or seemed to be waking, I felt a presence near me. Hovering close to my head. A cold, mocking presence. And I was alone. No one to call out to, like Drew Knox did when he had his ghastly nightmares in You Will Know Me. It was You Will Know Me, of course, disturbing my sleep. I'd stayed up late finishing it. Something I seldom do. Something I knew I shouldn't do with a Megan Abbott novel, but something I know I'll do again, and again, and again, regardless. Abbot casts a deliciously unsettling spell I am powerless to resist. It comes upon me incrementally, hints revealed in what seems a perfectly ordinary tableau. Faces I recognize and feel I know. Until I notice something different. An odd glint in the eyes, shadows that lie beyond my first impression. Words in an unexpected, inappropriate context. The effect is cumulative, edging into my comprehension like a storm front blotting a sunny horizon. In You Will Know Me, Abbott reveals the suspicious cloud bank's nose at the very beginning: The vinyl banners rippled from the air vent, the restaurant roiling with parents, the bobbing of gymnast heads, music gushing from the weighty speakers keeled on the window ledges. Slung around Devon’s neck were three medals, two silver and one gold, her first regional-champion title on the vault. “I’m so proud of you, sweetie,” Katie whispered in her daughter’s ear. “You can do anything.” Later, Katie would come to think of that night as the key to everything that came after, the secret code. But at the time, it was just another party, a celebration like dozens of others, all to honor their exceptional fifteen-year-old daughter. Trouble ahead. Fair warning. And Abbott does play fair, all the way. The clues she scattered so artfully along the narrative create a random texture that now and then gave me the sense I was a step or two ahead of the main characters. Yet collectively these nebulous erratic whiffs of danger never quite coalesced into certainty. One thing, though, was for sure: a relentless encroaching unease weighting the air. A large part of the fragility of my confidence in the appearance of things in You Will Know Me came from the woman whose viewpoint carries most of the story--Katie, mother of Devon, the teenage gymnast prodigy and focus of everyone's concern. I shared Katie's bias as a mom, which included misinterpreting or rationalizing initial signs that raised tiny questions about the way things seemed. I stayed with her as these signs mounted until I began to see, or think I saw, significance Katie was missing. Now it got tricky for me. I could see the true narrator--Abbott--was being sly, smooth as satin, playing with me as she led Katie, and then me, this way and that until I yielded to her mastery and simply hung on for the ride. It helped calm me recognizing a couple of Abbott's ploys. She foreshadows by ducking back to an earlier time. The beginning, for example, gave me Katie already knowing how it all comes out reflecting how it all started. This happened several times, the finding clarity from a step or so back. I suppose it can confuse readers accustomed to strictly sequential narrative, but for me it helped bring into focus Katie's own attempts to understand what was happening as it unfolded around her. While all eyes ostensibly were on Devon, a fascinating individual around whom the story centers with its theme of how far people will go, what they're willing to accept and to sacrifice in order to realize a dream, I found Devon's younger brother, Drew, the most interesting character. Both as a person and as the character that ties the story together. He's a brilliant, precocious little nerd. In some settings he'd be an obnoxious little nerd, and sometimes he was that here, too. But the obnoxiousness, I eventually learned, was in fact a gift. Drew is a little oracle. His nightmares had a prescience I found unnerving, especially as it eluded, even annoyed his family. At the same time I came to respect his outlook, his observance of detail, and his native savvy. I came to rely on the little guy more and more as niggling suspicions began to gather, merging, fusing eventually into a roar of revelation that assaulted my own ears. "I could hear thousands of eyes watching us," gold medal Olympian Nadia Comaneci says in her book Letters to a Young Gymnast, a book Megan Abbott quotes from variously in You Will Know Me. I know I'll never get back those six hours of sleep Abbott took from me, and in truth their loss was a small price for the return. The vital human questions she raised in this all-too-human story continue echoing for me. I hope they always will.

Normally, on the theory that life is too short, I avoid reading anything about sports. But You Will Know Me seemed worth a shot. For one thing, at the time I was reading it, the summer Olympics were in full swing. Also, the reviews I had read were very positive. And the fact is, it was good – very good. The crime forms an intriguing subplot, but the novel is really about these young gymnasts, their fierce dedication to the sport, and the cost of that dedication to their minds, bodies, and families. The writing is excellent. The particular teenage gymnast – and potential Olympian – around whom this novel’s events center is called Devon; the story unfolds from the point of view of her mother Katie. Their relationship is close and intense, and prone to sudden bouts of disequilibrium. I found Devon’s sweet younger brother Drew to be the unsung hero of the whole scenario. Read it and see if you don’t agree with me.

"You Will Know Me" (a very good title, by the way, for a not very good book that I increasingly grew to dislike) is a kind of cross between "I, Tonya" and "The Bad Seed." Eric and Katie are the parents of Devon, a teenage girl upon whose shoulders lie the hopes and dreams, not only of her family and herself but apparently the entire town. Their wish is that she will rise to the status of an Olympian gymnast. Devon is as driven as everyone around her. Virtually all the parents, including her own, are willing to sacrifice everything, money, morals, the truth, to achieve success for "our Devon." To nearly everyone Devon is a stranger. "Nearly sixteen. Fearless. Extraordinary. Like no one else. Only like herself. Whoever that was." Katie, too, is a stranger (or estranged) within her own household. She no longer recognizes her daughter or her husband. No one is who they seem. The entire town is riddled with secrets and lies. I realize that I am making this novel sound a lot better than what it is. Yes, it is highly readable and suspenseful and stuffed with enough red herrings to fill a fish market. But it is also peopled with ugly and unpleasant characters lacking any semblance of morality whose sole purpose in life is driven by ambition. There are also nightmarish words and phrases that jump out at you like cheap shock effects in a horror movie. Abbott keeps you guessing while creating an undercurrent of desire and dread throughout. But the ending, which should have culminated in a sinister and cynical conclusion, is a complete cop out. Spoiler Alert! Devon lies to her parents about what really happened to Ryan, her secret paramour, that fateful night on Ash Road. Eric and Katie and others cover her tracks and shield her from the prying eyes of the police. But how much more powerful would this ending have been if everyone had continued protecting Devon, knowing that she had not been involved in a tragic accident but rather had committed a coldblooded murder? Also, the final sentences of the book are as flat and anti-climatic and disappointing as those that end that other acclaimed thriller "Gone Girl."

You Will Know Me is the fourth of Megan Abbott’s novels I’ve read. It’s another good read, well-written, well-plotted, dark like I like my fiction, but it succumbs to what I see as weaknesses in her work—principal characters and narrators whose dilemmas (and management of their dilemmas) become a bit tedious and even somewhat dubious; too many characters, many of whom are indistinct, annoying to have to track, and who just over-populate her stories; and a tendency to drag her endings out interminably, long after you’ve had enough. The End Of Everything, which is exceptional, escapes these hazards. You Will Know Me does not. I found none of the characters in this novel especially interesting, likable, or complex enough to fully enjoy their company (or anguish) over 340 pages. Parents (as in You Will Know Me) living vicariously through their kids (precocious or not) are inherently boring and unsympathetic, no matter to what dramatic depths their obsessions may drag them. And their kids, if they’ve subscribed to their parent’s life-map for them, even if they’re willing to do twisted things to fulfill it, in the end are as boring as their parents. Abbott isn’t quite “formulaic,” but like formulaic works, You Will Know Me, like The Fever and Give Me Your Hand, left me, ultimately, with a feeling of non-satiety, emptiness. It’s also like that feeling you get hanging around a bit too long with someone whose psychopathology starts to feel more cloying and draining than fascinating. You wanna move on...escape...if only into another unread Abbott novel.

Megan Abbott’s “You Will Know Me” is a cold, coiling, cynical, thriller that’s set around gymnastic competitions. The vault’s a perfect vault. You’ll tear through it saying to yourself, “I hope she sticks the landing.” It all begins with a prologue, rather provocatively set in the middle—like those serialized TV dramas that show you where things will end up at the Fall Season finale--where we learn something bad has/will happen---and then in chapter 1 we flash back to the beginning of the story. The novel revolves around budding gymnast Devon Knox. She’s under five feet in her middle teens and hasn’t gone through puberty. Fixed only on one goal—gymnastic success—she’s got an adolescent’s mind inside that girl’s body. She’s closed, superior. She misses a lot of school because of gymnastic competitions, but she still maintains her A’s. (At one point a teacher tells her parents, Eric and Katie, that they’re in the Devon Knox business while he’s in the education business.) Devon’s the star gymnast of her local training gym. It’s somewhere in America—the author never tells us exactly where (and that deliberate anywhereness has the strange effect of distancing us rather than drawing us closer. Those people can’t be us, can they?). Devon’s trying to qualify for the elite status that will set her on the road to the Olympics. Eric and Katie spend all their efforts and money betting on her success. They have a younger son, Drew, who’s a science nerd. He watches and waits patiently for his turn to come. The author fills them all out beautifully, as she does with the other characters, too. And she does it with deceptive easiness. You’ll probably want to read it quickly, but take time to admire the gorgeous prose that slashes and bites. Here, look: “Screaming now, all of them crowding her, their hands white, their bodies too. Surrounding her, crushing her. Swallowing her whole.” The tale is told in third person almost entirely through the eyes of Katie. Growing up poor and abused, she marries Eric when he gets her pregnant, and their marriage seems to endure, united by Devon’s progress. Until the events that ignite the tale send things spinning in all directions. Katie views the other mothers at the gym as a “klatch,” never seeming to realize that she’s part of it, too. She speaks her truth to their klatchiness, but most—especially Gwen, who writes the checks that keep the vaulters vaulting and the balancers balancing—usually just keep going on with what they’re saying anyway—her words seem to have no effect on them. They all know how it’s going to turn out better than Katie does. (If she listened more, if she were more self-aware and less self-absorbed, there would be no book.) Meanwhile Eric is the head of the boosters, the motivator who keeps the enthusiasm going. And then there’s studmuffin Ryan, who makes mothers pant and the girls gasp. He enters the scene as part of the crew who’s remodeling the gym, and he’s the one who sets the plot in motion. There’s a tragedy, and it becomes a whodunit for awhile, but then a casual paragraph you may almost miss will start honing you in and maybe you’ll think, “oh good grief. Yes!” And if you do, it becomes more of a when and how rather than a who-dunit. And then all is resolved, and no. Ms. Abbott doesn’t fail to stick that landing. Not at all. Notes and asides: A few four letter words at the just right moment. Two deliberate loose ends.

I read this book in 2 days, which is an index of both how readable it is as well as how much it grabs you. The book centers around a family with a teenage daughter who is on track to become an Elite Level gymnast (gymnastics is somewhat unique in that, as explained in the book, you could set yourself up to get a college gymnastics scholarship and yet never compete at the elite level, which is the international/Olympic track). As someone who was a competitive swimmer throughout my entire childhood into college, I was intrigued by the world of competitive gymnastics portrayed in this book...it was familiar in a sense but also foreign in many ways. This book is more so about the parents of competitive gymnasts rather than the gymnasts themselves. The atmosphere was very moody- I don't think I once pictured any of the events occurring on a sunny day. Was it believable? Maybe not always. But it does ask a lot of interesting questions about how far parents will go for their kids' dreams (or, their dreams...the line is blurry), and what the consequences are when kids are old enough to understand the stakes. Also, there are many sleazy sexual undertones that are realistic but enough to make you squirm.

You have to hand it to Megan Abbott though. She knows people. The dynamic relationships in You Will Know Me are spot on. The (slightly) pushy but proud parents, the determined teen, the hopeful coach and spiteful parents all make for a read that really pulls you in. The real beauty is in the easily overlooked details in her writing. A line or two here or there that makes you stop and do a double take. That makes you question your opinion of certain characters. "She was the most dangerous thing in her own life. Her body, the only dangerous thing.” The story is told from Katie's perspective. She tries to portray an image of strength, to be a pillar of support for Devon as she works her way towards a place in the Olympics but it's clear from the foreshadowing at the start that she is fragile. Constantly obsessing over Devon's childhood accident. Other readers have said that they found Devon's brother Drew to be interesting but this is where the audiobook fell a little short for me. The narrator gave him a lisp. I found it slightly cringey and it often distracted me from his words-which turned out to be quite prophetic in the end. Young girls often dominate Megan's books but here they mostly take a back seat. Everything we learn about Devon is leaked from her mothers thoughts and actions. It really worked here as the characters are so well developed. This book is about sacrifice and it's often the parents who need to make sacrifices for their children's dreams to become a reality. Katie thinks (as all parents do) that she knows Devon completely. It was very interesting to see this slowly unravel as the story progressed. “That’s what parenthood was about, wasn’t it? Slowly understanding your child less and less until she wasn’t yours anymore but herself.” As this was an audiobook it's hard to talk about the pacing but what I will say is that this book never bored me. It held my interest the whole way through. I had put off rating this book for a while. On one hand it was really well written but on the other I found the story quite predictable. I think Megan Abbott has found a formula which works well for her. This leads to a satisfying read but ultimately, an ending that I saw coming from the first few chapters. If you've never read a Megan Abbott book before then you'll more than likely love and rave about this. If you're a long time you'll probably still enjoy the dynamics even with the predictable ending.

What an original idea for a novel. And well-constructed. I read this quite quickly and I'm not a fast reader. I'd certainly recommend this.

深みもない 適当に書いたような どうでもいい 本や！！！！ 会話も適当なら 話の筋もいい加減！！！！文が読みにくいし、ぎこちない 今１００ページぐらいやけど、もう限界や 自殺するわ 金返してほしいぐらいや

Even though psychological thrillers are my guilty pleasures-the ones that keep me up at night and make me forget about everything around me-I cannot settle for something that's not well written. Abbott's writing shines. Every line in this book is replete with sensory details and imageries that put her characters and settings in the most realistic frames. I've never known the life of an elite gymnast but Abbott gave me a real taste of what it might look like- starting from the hard work, to the pain, to the scrapes and injuries, to the unreal level of grit and determination that goes into the making of a world class athlete. This is not a thriller you come across everyday. It doesn't talk about jilted lovers or psychopaths. (Or maybe it does, but not in the way you'd think.) And yet, it manages to excel in what it sets to do. These are the books that remind you why sometimes, it doesn't matter even if you can predict the ending from halfway down the book, you'd still keep reading it because of how exquisitely the story is told. You'll see the ugliness beneath the surface of loving parents and naive teenagers, and yet, you cannot help but understand where they're coming from. I've been fortunate to have come across some of the most well written psychological thrillers this year and You Will Know Me is definitely among the top ones.

4,5 stars Characterization, plot, family dynamics and suspense - all so flawless. Good God, that woman certainly knows how to write.