My Heart Is Either Broken by Megan Abbott, 2013
The magic trick:
Considering literary themes through the lens of Dateline
For those of you addicted to Dateline but wished the episodes were able to somehow get beyond the surface story and tell us what those troubled married couples were talking about behind closed doors…. do I have a story for you!
A young couple’s baby is missing. Was she kidnapped? Did she wander off? Did the parents have something to do with it?
We’ve got a very Gone Girl-esque look at the local media, drumming up controversy. And the stress starts to tear at the seams of the marriage.
It’s a brilliant way to look at marriage, parenthood, and issues of adult identity – all very serious, dare I say literary, ideas – through a more page-turnery lens of true crime.
And that’s quite a trick on Abbott’s part.
The selection:
The next day the front page of the paper had a series of articles marking the two-month anniversary of Shelby’s disappearance.
They had the picture of Lorie under the headline “What Does She Know?” There was a picture of him, head down, walking from the police station yesterday. The caption read: “More unanswered questions.”
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