Bodily Autonomy, Thriller Edition

In which fiction attempts to outdo reality

Hello! I hope you’ve been well (Oh me, you ask? COVID. Blerg.) and are pleased with whatever plans/non-plans you have on tap for Thanksgiving. I’m back up and running after this bout with the bug, phew!, as this time of year tends to register—at least to me—as both a marathon AND a sprint (all wrapped up in a burpee). And in a addition to the WEEK my kiddo gets off for Thanksgiving, he’s had a couple other holidays plus an entire week of minimum days this month. No School November is a vibe. A vibe that smells suspiciously like the panic sweat of parents frantically scrambling to solve their real-life game of Schedule Tetris.

Anyway. Books! I was inspired to bring you these two reads given the good news that election day brought last week on the abortion rights front. Yes, lawmakers: women see you coming for our bodily autonomy, and we know where our polling places are.

Granted this is silver lining; the cloud, of course, being that since Roe v. Wade was overturned last year (a storm all its own), those who are opposed to a woman’s right to determine her own reproductive life (and thus, her life life) have been emboldened to keep coming for more. A living nightmare. Because if our bodies don’t belong to ourselves, who the F do they belong to? Yes, there are books that come at the subject more directly, but reading these two—Laura Lippman’s PROM MOM and Megan Abbott’s BEWARE THE WOMAN—in rapid succession¹, I was struck by the unique refractions that a thriller lens can cast upon this real-life horror show.

---

In each book, we have women whose pregnancies are the opposite of personal; in each instance, the condition is most perilous because of the way others—society in one case and a man in the other—assume that the woman’s pregnancy is some sort of de facto surrender of her autonomy, that carrying a baby makes her body part of the public domain, an object to be judged, or used and then disposed of.

In PROM MOM, our protagonist is Amber, a teenager who didn’t know² she was pregnant and delivered a premature baby in a hotel room at prom. The baby is found dead the next morning, and Amber becomes a tabloid fixture (hashtag prom mom!) who watched her promising future dissolve from her cell in juvie as public judgment set in. Meanwhile, the baby’s daddy Joe, a popular bro she tutored in French, was promptly and easily forgiven, his transgressions forgotten, his life rapidly back on track. Two decades on, we watch as Amber returns to her hometown and seeks to build a life for herself… and maybe settle some unfinished business between her and Joe?

Set partially around the 2020 election and early COVID and laced with internal musings about everything from politics to the Peloton, real estate, plastic surgery, and, yes, the question of whether or not to have children, PROM MOM takes place in Baltimore and New Orleans (both home turf for Lippman) and covers the time in history when the author’s real-life marriage was ending. Which is to say, the narrative doesn’t shy away from following a tangent to see where it will lead. Or are all of those detailed wonderings merely sleights of hand, deployed to distract us from our once-and-forever Prom Mom’s plot to deliver her own revenge?

As for Abbott’s terrifying tale, BEWARE THE WOMAN kicks off with horny newlyweds Jacy (already prego) and Jed on their way to his father’s cabin in the woods for a visit. Dr. Ash is, at first, charming and accommodating, but things get weird quickly, as things are wont to do in Abbott’s hands. BEWARE’s spooky, lonesome wooded setting (complete with dead WiFi and bum cell reception) lets you know you’re in for a scare, while the pregnant-lady-as-prey premise is straight Rosemary’s Baby.

Abbott is largely known for psychological thrillers (though I happily will read anything the woman writes down to and including her shopping list), and her body of work is indeed creepy as shit. In that, BEWARE is no exception, though it diverges from her usual fare somewhat: it’s set not in the realm of elite sport (Abbott’s conquered the dark side of cheerleading, gymnastics and ballet) but in a secluded home our protagonist becomes increasingly bent on escaping—even as she is repeatedly gaslit and thwarted in her attempts by her dolt of a husband and Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde of a FIL, who, it soon becomes clear, sees women as evil succubi, vessels useful only insofar as they are able to provide men with spawn, and then of no use at all—worse, even!—burdens to be cast aside like so much spent Tupperware.

Abbott is a master; her books are far more concerned with mood and interiority than jump scares or plot twists (though she’ll get you on those fronts, too) - and always manages to serve up some thought-provoking commentary alongside the frights. (Jacy’s mother’s benediction ahead of her daughter’s marriage? “We all marry strangers.”) But in this case, it’s all cut with a dread that’s far more potent for its echoes of the current moment. Who are these creeps, coming for your uteri? And what are they capable of?

Women, beware!

1. Lippman and Abbott are pals in real life, and once I discovered this they became a unit of sorts in my mind.

2. Or is it that she didn’t want to know? Either way…