The Turnout: A Read with Jenna Pick
"Impossible to put down, creepy and claustrophobic. It’s ‘Whatever Happened to Baby Jane’ in ballet shoes." —Stephen King
Best Book of the Year
NPR • Wall Street Journal • Boston Globe • Library Journal • CrimeReads • LitReactor • Air Mail
With their long necks and matching buns and pink tights, Dara and Marie Durant have been dancers since they can remember. Growing up, they were homeschooled and trained by their glamorous mother, founder of the Durant School of Dance. After their parents' death in a tragic accident nearly a dozen years ago, the sisters began running the school together, along with Charlie, Dara's husband and once their mother's prized student.
Marie, warm and soft, teaches the younger students; Dara, with her precision, trains the older ones; and Charlie, sidelined from dancing after years of injuries, rules over the back office. Circling around one another, the three have perfected a dance, six days a week, that keeps the studio thriving. But when a suspicious accident occurs, just at the onset of the school's annual performance of The Nutcracker—a season of competition, anxiety, and exhilaration—an interloper arrives and threatens the sisters' delicate balance.
Taut and unnerving, The Turnout is Megan Abbott at the height of her game. With uncanny insight and hypnotic writing, it is a sharp and strange dissection of family ties and sexuality, femininity and power, and a tale that is both alarming and irresistible.
Best Book of the Year
NPR • Wall Street Journal • Boston Globe • Library Journal • CrimeReads • LitReactor • Air Mail
- Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
- A TODAY Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick
- An Instant New York Times Bestseller
With their long necks and matching buns and pink tights, Dara and Marie Durant have been dancers since they can remember. Growing up, they were homeschooled and trained by their glamorous mother, founder of the Durant School of Dance. After their parents' death in a tragic accident nearly a dozen years ago, the sisters began running the school together, along with Charlie, Dara's husband and once their mother's prized student.
Marie, warm and soft, teaches the younger students; Dara, with her precision, trains the older ones; and Charlie, sidelined from dancing after years of injuries, rules over the back office. Circling around one another, the three have perfected a dance, six days a week, that keeps the studio thriving. But when a suspicious accident occurs, just at the onset of the school's annual performance of The Nutcracker—a season of competition, anxiety, and exhilaration—an interloper arrives and threatens the sisters' delicate balance.
Taut and unnerving, The Turnout is Megan Abbott at the height of her game. With uncanny insight and hypnotic writing, it is a sharp and strange dissection of family ties and sexuality, femininity and power, and a tale that is both alarming and irresistible.
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Community Reviews
I really hate rating books this low, but.... This book was not for me. I had such high hopes - I used to be a dancer, and was so excited to read a novel centered around ballet. But the writing was tedious and repetitive, and it was weaved with such.... an ick factor. Everything was oddly sexual for discussing children learning ballet, and I couldn't deal with all the incestuous undertones throughout - why are the two sisters so intrigued and turned on by the other's sex life? Why does this gross manipulative contractor have so much sex appeal for everyone? Why is Marie acting like a lovestruck horny teenager? I had to skip/skim entire sections because it was so cringeworthy. It was so uncomfortable to read. The only reason I didn't give up on it was because I'm behind on my monthly reading goal. Otherwise this would've been a DNF. I ended up setting the audiobook to 3x speed and fast forwarding through all the bs.
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