The Turnout by Megan Abbott (2021) In retrospect, we don't know how we allowed let BD (Beloved Daughter) to pursue ballet dancing when she was a tiny tot......
We must have blotted out the memory of every movie we ever sat through that depicted the ballet world as a hotbed of dysfunctional passion ("The Red Shoes") toxic rivalries ("The Turning Point") or even out-and-out blood drenched horror ("Suspira" and its remake, "Black Swan")....
Anybody taking this book seriously would no sooner stick their daughter in a tutu than have her hunt down Asian murder hornets with a butterfly net........
The Durant Ballet School depicted in this novel is run by a twisted trio with a backstory full of dark, dark secrets. Sisters Marie and Dara rule the school, with the Marie the lighter-than-air ethereal spirit who teaches to little 'uns and Dara the stern task-mistress who oversees the older girls. Dara's husband Charlie, a one time brilliant dancer himself but now afflicted with a lifetime of injuries looks after the business end,
A snake slithers into this already warped Garden of Bleedin' in the form of Derek, a garrulous, vaguely sinister contractor who talks the sisters and Charlie into an extensive renovation of their the school's third floor studio.
Derek, a smooth talker whose oily patter clearly masks ulterior motives engages in hot 'n heavy sex with the unstable Marie while slyly implying to Dara he has designs on the rambling old house the Durant sisters and Charlie grew up in (Charlie having been unofficially adopted into the family in his teen years).
Even worse, the contractor's ever more expensive and noisy renovations wreak all sorts of havoc on the school as the Durant sisters prepare their premiere holiday presentation of ...what else, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker ballet. And in this school, there's more than a few cracked nuts running around......
(This involves detailed descriptions of the tortured, abused and mutated feet of ballerinas and their jealous rages that lead them to plant razor blades in the toe shoes of the girl who has the lead role in "The Nutcracker". We count ourselves lucky that the only horrific moment we witnessed at our daughter's ballet recital was the school's insistence on finishing every show with their signature showstopping number, "Disco Yankee Doodle" Please.....don't ask....)
Sooner or later, all these characters' secrets see the light of day, which can only lead to.....what else....twisted reveals and dead bodies. (Which, per our usual policy for suspense thrillers, we'll never discuss here.....)
While we realize some readers may find it annoying, we kind of liked Megan Abbott's technique of slicing and dicing up the novel into quick, brief digestible little excerpts, as if the entire book's been served up in hors d'oeuvre sized chunks you can snag off a tray as they go by.......
You'll have to decide for yourselves which sight sticks in your mind as more upsetting here....., the blackened, gnarled toes of the young dancers or the fates of people who don't make it out of the book alive......
For us it's a tossup....and it makes for a jolly dark 3 & 1/2 star (***1/2) read. (Though nothing in "The Turnout" could equal the madness of "Disco Yankee Doodle")
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