The End of Everything (novel)

Lizzie Hood and Evie Verver are next-door neighbors, thirteen years old and inseparable. Lizzie is fascinated by Evie's family: her reclusive mother, her glamorous older sister Dusty and her father, whose attention Lizzie craves. Her parents are divorced and her mother is having a late-night affair with a married man, Dr. Aiken. Then one day, Evie vanishes after school and Lizzie is questioned by the police about the disappearance, although she cannot remember anything at the time. A few days later, she speaks to Mr. Verver and remembers that Evie had shown her some cigarette butts in their backyard and told her that a man would come at night and look through her window. She tells Mr. Verver about the cigarettes but not the man and when the police arrive, she realizes that she saw a maroon Buick Skylark on the day of the disappearance which belongs to their neighbor, Mr. Shaw.

Lizzie begins to spend more time with the Ververs. She remembers being in the lake with Evie as children and nearly drowning before Mr. Verver saved her. The police search Shaw's house but cannot find cigarettes or anything linking him to the kidnapping. Lizzie starts to believe she imagined it was Shaw's car, but Dusty insists that it was. When a rumor goes around school that Evie drowned herself in the lake, Lizzie remembers seeing Mr. Shaw smoking and finds cigarettes hidden behind his office building. That night, she goes to his house and searches the backyard, finding cigarettes and a photo of her and Evie in his milk chute. She hides what she finds in her own milk chute and directs Mr. Verver to find it.

She gets closer to Mr. Verver, taking Dusty's spot for long nightly chats. One day the police come over to tell Mr. Verver that they found a body and even though it was not Evie, Lizzie suddenly realizes that Evie could be dead. She breaks into Mr. Shaw's house and is caught by his son, Pete, who tells her that his father and mother have been speaking on the phone and that he had to send money to his father at a motel. Lizzie protects him and tells Mr. Verver that Evie called her from the motel. When the police arrive, the motel manager says Mr. Shaw had been staying there under a fake name, with a girl he said was his daughter, but they are no longer there. Pete tells Lizzie that he told his mother what he did and she called Mr. Shaw to warn him.

After Lizzie spends another evening talking with Mr. Verver, Dusty confronts her and claims that Evie knew Mr. Shaw was watching her and would take her away, and that she wanted him to. That night, Lizzie hears Mrs. Verver scream and goes outside to see that Evie has returned. Dusty leaves the house, saying she does not want to speak to Evie, but Lizzie stays with Evie constantly, waiting to hear what happened. One night, Mr. Shaw dies by suicide in the Verver's backyard and is discovered by Evie and Lizzie. Shortly after, Evie tells Lizzie that she asked Mr. Shaw to take her away and that she knew he had been watching her. In the car, he told her that he had loved her since he rescued her from the lake as a child and he had thought of suicide. She tells Lizzie that because he saved her, she consented to sex.

Dr. Aiken tells Lizzie that after Evie disappeared, he examined Dusty and she had scratches that she claimed were from field hockey. Lizzie confronts Dusty, who tells her that she saw Mr. Shaw in their backyard and she confronted Evie the day she disappeared and the two of them fought: Dusty saying that Evie was disgusting for wanting Mr. Shaw's attention and Evie asking how it was different than Dusty's relationship with Mr. Verver. Mr. Shaw intervened and Evie left with him. Dusty tells Lizzie that neither sister will tell because they do not want to hurt Mr. Verver. At the end of the book, Lizzie's mother tells her that it was Mr. Shaw who rescued her from drowning, even though she thought it had been Mr. Verver and Mr. Shaw thought he had rescued Evie.

The End of Everything was the first novel that Megan Abbott tried to write in 1994, while she was in graduate school in her early 20s. Inspired by a PBS documentary about a girl who had either been abducted by, or run away with, an older man and by Lolita, she started writing a novel about the relationship between a young girl and an older man.[1][2][3] At the time, she struggled with the plot and ultimately set it aside for the next decade while she published her first four novels, all of which were period noir. When she decided to take a break from the genre following the publication of Bury Me Deep, she returned to the novel to cover similar themes in a new setting.[1][2] The End of Everything was Abbott's first novel with a contemporary setting and a teenage protagonist.[4]

The setting – a Midwestern suburb in the 1980s – was inspired by her childhood growing up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, where Jeffrey Eugenides's novel The Virgin Suicides is set.[5][6] The Ververs were influenced by the family of her childhood best friend Meg, who were similarly idealized until her friend's brother was killed in a boating accident at a time when Abbott and Meg were beginning to become more distant.[7][8] The character of Mr. Verver was similarly inspired by a friend's father on whom she had had a childhood crush.[8] She modeled the character of Lizzie as "a Grimm's fairy tale version of a Nancy Drew".[9] In a 2020 article for The New York Times, Abbott wrote that she was repeatedly asked whether the novel was inspired by the Oakland County Child Killer case, the kidnapping of four children in 1976 and 1977 from a Detroit suburb. Although she had been living 15 miles (24 km) away at the time, she had forgotten the events but had remembered the sense of danger, feelings which often appear in her writing.[3]

It was published on July 7, 2011, by Reagan Arthur, which became part of Little, Brown, in the United States and by Picador in the United Kingdom.[8][10] The audiobook was read by Emily Bauer and released by Blackstone Audio.[11] Publishers Weekly described it as Abbott's break-out novel.[12] In 2011, she was listed as one of the '23 Writers We Adore' by Time, on a list with Salman Rushdie and Jonathan Franzen.[8]

The End of Everything was generally well-received, including a starred review from Publishers Weekly.[8][13] It was listed as one of the best books of 2011 by Publishers Weekly, The Boston Globe, and the Washington Examiner.[14][15][16] Several reviews noted its similarity to Abbott's previous novels, describing it as "pre-noir" and "noir at its finest".[17][18] Reviewers have also compared the novel to those by Tana French, Kate Atkinson, and Judy Blume, as well as to Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones.[13][16][19] Despite these comparisons, it received praise from the Los Angeles Times and Library Journal for its original take on the coming-of-age story.[20][21]

The Huffington Post praised the novel for its erotic prose and its sinister portrayal of Mr. Verver.[18] This portrayal of the "near-creepiness" of the relationship between Dusty and Mr. Verver was also noted in a review by Susannah Meadows for The New York Times.[22] Nick Hornby, in an article for The Believer, similarly commented that "sex hangs over the suburb like some sort of tropical mist". He commended Abbott for the way she handles the plot, balancing her primarily-female characters between the roles of victim and instigator.[23] The mysteries of the novel remain unsolved at its end, asking questions about motivation, sex, and whether Lizzie can be believed.[24][25]

It received a critical review from Leah Greenblatt in Entertainment Weekly, who gave the book a B- rating and argued that its interesting story was hidden behind overwrought prose.[26] Booklist praised the novel's "dreamy, first-person narrative" but felt that the ending chapters were too expository.[27] The novel received criticism from one Elle reviewer for its plot twist.[19] A review in Kirkus commented further on this theme, "Abbott guides us skillfully through Lizzie’s hothouse fantasies, but at the expense of action".[10] Cullen Gallagher in the Los Angeles Review of Books described the novel as "disturbingly, even brutally honest", noting in particular a scene where Lizzie tries to understand the kidnapper.[17] Abbott said in an interview that she receives the most critical letters from readers about The End of Everything.[2]