A life-changing secret destroys an unlikely friendship in this "magnetic" (Meg Wolitzer) psychological thriller from the Edgar Award-winning author of <i>Dare Me</i>.<br>You told each other everything. Then she told you too much. <br>Kit has risen to the top of her profession and is on the brink of achieving everything she wanted. She hasn't let anything stop her. <br>But now someone else is standing in her way - Diane. Best friends at seventeen, their shared ambition made them inseparable. Until the day Diane told Kit her secret - the worst thing she'd ever done, the worst thing Kit could imagine - and it blew their friendship apart.<br>Kit is still the only person who knows what Diane did. And now Diane knows something about Kit that could destroy everything she's worked so hard for. <br>How far would Kit go, to make the hard work, the sacrifice, worth it in the end? What wouldn't she give up? Diane thinks Kit is just like her. Maybe she's right. Ambition: it's in the blood . . .<br><br>
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“The Mad Pulses of the Blood”
Megan Abbott’s delirious “Give Me Your Hand” is the story of Kit and Diane, both relentless perfectionists (it’s in Diane’s blood, and she hands off that drive to Kit). They meet in high school, share a secret, drift apart, and then--inevitably--meet again in a research lab when they’re post doctorates hoping for an el primo spot (three will be selected) in a research project under the leadership of world class scientist Dr. Lena Severin. Kit, until the reappearance of Diane, figures she’s sure to get one of the spots, as Dr. Severin is researching an extreme form of PMS and Kit is the only woman among her collection of lab rats. And now here’s Diane again (she turns up in a scarlet lab coat she copped from her last job). And Dr. Severin has especially added her to the collection--presumably to give her one of the three slots. Will Kit still be among the chosen? And what about the secret that Diane has told her back in their high school days? (We learn early that Kit knows Diane’s secret, and as the story spins on you’ll probably figure out what that secret is before the reveal, but it hardly matters). What will matter is what Kit will do about it. Thankfully, in this era of multi-unreliable narrators, the story is told by Kit, who seems to be quite reliable--as a narrator, anyway. It flicks back and forth in time for awhile, in alternating chapters between the girls as teenagers, written in the past tense, and the present, written in (duh) the present. Eventually the past chapters dwindle down, when we’re pretty much caught up. Abbott has done her homework. She stuffs the story full of information about lab procedures, and the people who work in them. It’s quite suspenseful, and it has that delicious air of Highsmithian amorality about it, as well as a touch of Hitchcock--a bit of “Strangers on a Train,” and a bit of “Rope,” of all things. Abbott is also a skillful writer, and she knows how to build suspense--so much so that your willing of suspension of disbeli...
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