Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com’s books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you’re on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you’re here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too.
Megan Abbott’s 13th and latest novel, El Dorado Drive, is a riveting thriller centering suburban women and their pyramid schemes—so perhaps it should come as no surprise that the book’s already been optioned for an A24 television series. “Like Tupperware or Mary Kay in the past, [modern pyramid schemes] promise so much, the American Dream within reach,” Abbott says. “I began imagining how a trio of sisters could get drawn into it and how dangerous it could become. Do these women know when they’ve crossed a line into criminal activity, and what are they willing to do to keep going?” With El Dorado Drive, “I wanted to write about women and money,” she says. “So much of our life is ruled by money and, often, anxieties over money—it reveals so much about ourselves, our dreams and fears, pressures and fantasies.”
The El Dorado Drive adaptation will be far from Abbott’s first time translating books to the screen. Abbott co-developed the USA Network series Dare Me, based on her mystery set in the cutthroat world of cheerleading; is currently writing and executive producing (along with Taffy Brodesser-Akner) the Lionsgate psychological thriller series Here in the Dark, based on Alexis Soloski’s book of the same name; is co-writing, with author Laura Lippman, Lippman’s P.I. Tess Monaghan series; and is also working on adapting Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest for A24/Netflix.
The Detroit-born, New York-based bestselling and Edgar-award-winning author was named “Most Likely to Succeed” in high school; went to the University of Michigan before earning her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University; turned her dissertation into her first book, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir); edited the female noir anthology A Hell of a Woman; worked as a grant writer for the East Harlem nonprofit Union Settlement; is superstitious; is inspired by photographers, including Sally Mann, William Eggleston, and Gordon Parks, among many others; and lives in an apartment overlooking the Long Island Rail Road.
“It’s a cliché, but I do believe books are an empathy machine, and I want to write (and read) about women who may, from the outside, appear troubled, unlikeable, and difficult,” she says. “I want to be the defense attorney for all my characters, to try to show why they do what they do, what made them who they are.”
Good at: writing about female friendship dynamics; owning tchotchkes and multitasking; hula hooping.
Bad at: ballet; all sports; understanding crystals; sleeping.
Likes: movies, including Blue Velvet, Dressed to Kill, Some Like It Hot, and Double Indemnity; mid-century modern design; Film Forum; pulp fiction; Forest Hills Station House and Natural Market in her neighborhood; Nick Cave’s music and newsletter, “The Red Hand Files”; “Gen X queens” Kim Deal and Kim Gordon; Real Housewives of New York.
Writing essentials: sunlight; Orbit peppermint gum; music.
Collects: chalkware; first editions; vintage carnival prizes.
Peruse her book recommendations below.
The book that…:
…made me weep uncontrollably:
Denis Johnson’s Angels, which starts as a wild road trip tale and turns into something heartbreaking, with some deep truths about the American Dream and those left behind: the desperate and dispossessed.
…shaped my worldview:
Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem, which seemed to reveal dark, haunting truths about America that, as a 20-year-old, I’d only guessed at before.
…I swear I’ll finish one day:
George Eliot’s Middlemarch. But will I?
…I read in one sitting; it was that good:
James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, both first-personal confessional crime novels that seem to leap from the page.
…made me laugh out loud:
Charles Portis’s The Dog of the South, or any Charles Portis novel. One of the most idiosyncratic and thrilling voices in American literature.
…should be on every college syllabus:
Nella Larsen’s Harlem Renaissance novel, Passing, a sly, seductive tale that tackles far larger issues.
…I’ve re-read the most:
Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon. I can’t help myself.
…has the best opening line:
Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier: “This is the saddest story I have ever heard.”
…changed my life:
Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry’s Helter Skelter, which sounds deranged, but I firmly believe that it and Joe McGinniss’s Fatal Vision—both extremely flawed books—inspired at least two generations of crime novelists to find their craft.
…has a sex scene that will make you blush:
Susanna Moore’s In the Cut, which left first-degree burns on my fingertips (or so it felt).
…sealed a friendship:
Jack Pendarvis’s Your Body is Changing, which led to a mutual correspondence and now 20 years of friendship and a longstanding two-person book club.
…is a master class on dialogue:
Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest, where every line sings.
…broke my heart:
Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, which gains power as we accumulate experience and heartbreaks.
…everyone should read:
Lucy Sante’s exquisite memoir, I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition.
…currently sits on my nightstand:
Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley Under Water. I’ve been re-reading all the Ripley novels in sequence and continue to marvel at her creation.
Bonus question:
If I could live in any library or bookstore in the world, it would be:
John K. King Used & Rare Books in Detroit, Michigan—more than a million books in an abandoned glove factory—what more could you want?
