The Turnout

daughters, head shaking with rue.

 

From kindergarten until fifth and sixth grade, Dara and Marie had attended a spooky old Catholic school on the east side, the one their father had insisted upon. Until the day their mother announced that, going forward, she would be giving them lessons at home, so they wouldn't be beholden to the school's primitive views of life.

 

Their father resisted at first, but then he came to pick them up at the schoolyard one day and saw a boy-the meanest in fifth grade, with a birthmark over his left eye like a fresh burn-trying to pull Marie's pants down, purple corduroys to Dara's matching pink. Marie just stood there, staring at him, her fingers touching her forehead as though bewildered, transfixed.

 

Their father swerved over so fast his Buick came up on the curb, the grass. Everyone saw. He grabbed the little boy by the haunches and shook him until the nuns rushed over. What kind of school, he wanted to know, are you running here?

 

On the car ride home, Marie announced loudly that she hadn't minded it at all, what the boy had done.

 

It made my stomach wiggle, she said much more quietly to Dara in the backseat.

 

Their father wouldn't talk to Marie for days. He telephoned the school and thundered at the principal, so loud they heard him from upstairs, in their bunkbed. Marie's face in the moonlight was shiny with tears. Marie and their father were both mysterious to Dara. Mysterious and alike somehow. Primitive, their mother called them privately.

 

They never went back.

 

 

At home, lessons were different every day. You could never guess. Some mornings, they'd get out the great big globe from their father's den and Dara and Marie would spin it and their mother would tell them something about the country on which their finger landed. (Singapore is the cleanest country in the wo

SheReads s Most Anticipated 2021 Summer Thrillers for your Beach Bag

"Pulsing with suspense." People, "Book of the Week"

"Abbott's novels are often described as crime fiction, and, while indeed she works with mystery and suspense and draws on noir and Gothic tropes, her goal seems less to construct intricate, double-crossing plot problems than to explore the dark side of femininity....In other words, Megan Abbott is a mood." The New York Times Book Review

Abbott is a legend for good reason. No one combines the style of classic noir with the psyches of sophisticated men and women who are willing to do anything anything to succeed better than Abbott. Her latest is a dizzyingly fascinating story of a family-owned dance studio and the weight of unrequited ambition. An instant classic. Washington Post

Compelling Abbott leaves her audience riveted with each twist and turn, leading to a dramatic denouement. It s a fantastic work in every way. Manhattan Book Review

Ms. Abbott s prose has never been more impressive than in this whirlpool of psychological suspense, shocking images, well-wrought metaphors and one final twist that rattles like a serpent s tail in Eden. ­ Wall Street Journal

Abbott is a master of atmosphere, and in the blood, sweat, tears, bruises, ripped toenails, broken bones, rivalries, desires, and tutu-pink dreams that fill the studio during its annual production of The Nutcracker, she creates a world of almost unbearable tension, pirouetting ever further into darkness. Entertainment Weekly

[A] beautifully accomplished thriller From the first page to the reveal at the end, a palpable sense of menace and the sympathy we feel for Dara as her world unravels make it impossible to look away. Minneapolis Star Tribune
 
Sharp and unsettling prose. TIME

"Abbott so good at plucking the dark and twisted strands of female friendships and rivalries in books like You Will Know Me and Give Me Your Hand fashions her unsettling new novel around a ballet academy run by three high-strung former dancers, two of them sisters." The New York Times

While undoubtedly one of our best crime novelists, Abbott has also always struck me as akin to an anthropologist .In The Turnout, Abbott delves into the rarified world of ballerinas, astutely noting the symbols and signals underlying the romantic image. The Paris Review

"No one takes seemingly harmless environments and cracks them open to reveal their dark heart quite like Megan Abbott, and she does it again here with a tense narrative about the backstage antics of a ballet school that looks at femininity, anxiety, and power." Boston Globe

"Mines the creepy underside of ballet....Abbott takes her breathless reader to some very dark places, but also to beauty." Seattle Times

The Turnout is a page-turner, suffused with dread even when the scene being described involves doing paperwork with a contractor .If you enjoy twisty crime novels with unmistakably dark subject matter, you ll do well to put yourself in Abbott s capable hands for a few hundred pages. You ll never look at a pointe shoe the same way again. Chicago Review of Books

What I love about Abbott's books is she's made this great niche for herself, where she applies the tone and style of film noir to stereotypically feminine areas of interest. . . . I always love her stuff, and The Turnout is no exception. Alan Sepinwall for NPR

"[A] taut, suspenseful novel that's anxiety provoking in the best way." Vogue
 
An excavation of the dark sides of family and femininity. Elle

This is a deliciously creepy thriller about competition and family ties. Real Simple
 
[The Turnout] is as tightly wound as a dancer s bun. Good Housekeeping

There s no one better than Abbott at exploring issues of femininity and power struggles, and getting at the visceral heart of both. Fans of Black Swan and The Red Shoes are bound to be obsessed. Refinery29

Come for the ballet references, stay for the family secrets and wild ending. ­ theSkimm

The Turnout is an intriguing crime novel about family, power, and sexuality. The A.V. Club

Abbott s prose is dazzlingly precise and her portrayal of student rivalries razor-sharp in this taut and psychologically gripping novel. The Guardian

Excellent Abbott continues her high standards in the enthralling The Turnout. South Florida Sun Sentinel

[A] big, rich literary novel. A carefully controlled but free-flowing, almost musical style; episodic in structure, but with an entirely coherent theme that s implied, unmistakably, but never presented explicitly (there is no preaching to be tolerated) .Really, a lovely read, whether you come to it with that yearning or not. Shawangunk Journal

With clever storytelling that slowly and deliberately unspools, Abbott tells a tale about an unconventional family that holds on to generational trauma....Like any good firework show, Abbott creates a number of small explosions until the grand finale and you ll never see if coming. Apartment Therapy

[The Turnout] uses the world of ballet as the setting for a story of fraught familial connections and ominous acts. Inside Hook

[The Turnout] will delight readers who crave her combination of psychological insight and deep engagement with discipline here, in a family-owned ballet studio. ­­ Virtuoso Life

Abbott is back full force with a story that takes place in a family-run ballet studio. If Showtime dramas have taught us anything, it s that ballet is full of unexpected thrills and chills. Glitter Guide

The Turnout unfolds like a dark fairy tale, unpacking the rigid demands of femininity. Abbott fans and suspense lovers alike won t be disappointed with this exploration of human frailty and twisted love. LitHub
 
Abbott is not only a suspense author at the top of her game, she s also a scholar, and The Turnout promises to be both homage to classic tropes and visionary model for their evolution. CrimeReads

At once engaging and unnerving. Reader s Digest

Beautifully dark suspense . . . Abbott keeps the twists coming until the final pages. The Turnout is the kind of gripping, unnerving page turner we have come to expect from an author who does noir better than almost anyone." BookPage (starred review)
 
The Turnout is one of those slow-burning thrillers where every word and gesture carries immense weight .As both Dara and Marie make key choices, the sisters relationship tears apart, exposing each person for who they truly are, leaving deadly, sinister destruction in its wake. BookTrib

[The Turnout] is atmospheric, suspenseful, and full of marvelously juicy behind-the-scenes details. BookReporter

Gut-punching noir Abbott is pitch-perfect at making the sisters complex dynamic and mix of emotions plausible and painful, while capturing the competitiveness and cruelty of children s ballet, where every young girl wishes to be the center of attention. This look at the darker side of the dance world demonstrates why Abbott has few peers at crafting moving stories of secrets and broken lives. ­ Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Abbott has a top-notch ability to reveal the dark undercurrents of women s relationships and sexuality. Her taut, unsettling writing creates tension through the slightest actions and phrases, and keeps the pages turning. This is clever, chilling psychological suspense at its best. Library Journal (starred review)

Abbott brilliantly explores the psychosexual undercurrents throbbing throughout this haunting novel, from the dancers pointe shoes through even the Nutcracker itself. Booklist (starred review)

The mesmerizing prose will keep you turning the pages. Abbott is a master of thinly veiled secrets often kept by women who rage underneath their delicate exteriors. Kirkus Reviews

"One of the most well-known and acclaimed thriller writers working today is back with a twisted tale of fraying ties at a family-run ballet studio." BookPage

"Immersive, seductive . . . Abbott s singular and inimitable voice defines the tension perfectly throughout, scratching across the page like the sharpest knife." Rain Taxi

There s no one who captures the atmosphere of a tight-knit hothouse world, in all its feverish beauty and brutality, quite like Megan Abbott. Tana French, author of The Searcher

"All one needs to know about a Megan Abbott book is that it's a Megan Abbott book -- dreamy, sexy, a deep dive into a subculture that has been exhaustively researched. The Turnout is all those things and more, taking you so far into the world of a small ballet school that you feel the characters' aches and pains in your joints, your feet, and, most dangerous of all, your heart." Laura Lippman, author of Lady in the Lake

There is not a writer alive who is better at investigating the tension and threat of violence at the center of women s lives than Megan Abbott. Megan goes into the heart of female spaces and finds the ugly in all that pretty, the dark in all that light, with breath-taking suspense. The Turnout has notes of James M. Cain and Alfred Hitchcock, but it s better because it s so fresh and unexpected, so wholly revelatory. I turned page after page, holding my breath in fear, and also excitement, about what might happen in this run-down ballet school, what blood red might be lurking behind all that pink. This is Megan Abbott working at the absolute height of her talent. Attica Locke, author of Bluebird, Bluebird and Heaven, My Home

Megan Abbott is a master of atmosphere, and she captures the Durant School of Ballet a tinderbox of promise and perfectionism, innuendo and fierce desire, of tension twisted to a breaking point in all its merciless extravagance. The Turnout is a bewitching climb up a spiral staircase into the inner sanctum of the Durant family, a house of mirrors in which nothing is exactly what it seems. This novel pounds with blood and grips you in its teeth: Megan Abbott is unafraid as ever of the darkness that makes us human. Chloe Benjamin, author of The Immortalists

Abbott creates a dark and mesmerizing world and, as always, is so brilliant at portraying women and girls and their competition and complexities....It makes Black Swan look like a children s story. Harriet Tyce, author of Blood Orange