Blog Tour: The Turnout by Megan Abbott
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.
The story follows Dara Durant, who runs a renowned ballet school along with her sister Marie and her husband Charlie. Preparations for the school’s famous Nutcracker season are in full swing when an accident occurs, which in turn opens the door to an intruder who threatens all that Dara holds dear.
This book was a real departure for me from what I usually read. The setting of a ballet school really appealed to me, but the plot is as far from fluffy frills and tutus as you can get. It’s dark, compelling and more than a little unsettling. I didn’t particularly care for any of the characters, one in particular made my skin crawl, but I couldn’t stop reading. It’s written in short sharp segments that encourage binge reading, with plot twists left right and centre, none of which I saw coming. The ballet aspect of the book is more of a backdrop than an integral part of the plot, but I was fascinated by the brief insight into that world. The pain ballerinas endure for their art. The hardship behind the beauty. I’ll never watch a ballet in the same way again!
For more content on this enthralling read check out all the other lovely bookstagrammers and bloggers taking part in the tour - details in the Instagram post below! Thanks to Virago Books for the review copy.
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