Ballet flows through their veins. Dara and Marie Durant were dancers since birth, with their long necks and matching buns and pink tights, homeschooled and trained by their mother. Decades later the Durant School of Dance is theirs. The two sisters, together with Charlie, Dara's husband and once their mother's prize student, inherited the school after their parents died in a tragic accident nearly a dozen years ago. Marie, warm and soft, teaches the younger students; Dara, with her precision, trains the older ones; and Charlie, back broken after years of injuries, rules over the back office. Circling around each other, 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 delicate balance of everything they've worked for.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.
I've really loved some of this author's previous works but this wasn't my favorite. The premise was awesome and there were definitely certain scenes that are memorable but it ended up being a bit gratuitously sordid. I think there was so much to work with and so many characters that were developed but the twist and the ending left a lot to be desired. I would still recommend this author, and you may have better luck with this book than I did!
Every ballet dancer must achieve her turnout. The ability to rotate her body one-hundred-eight degrees, from the hips down to the toes
Imagine your thigh muscles wrapping around your bones, their mother always told them. Imagine your leg as a spinning barber pole.
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