A Review of Megan Abbott’s “The Turnout”
Slowly Bringing Down the House
If you’ve read Megan Abbott’s Dare Me, you’ll know that she can write in a way that presents a highly masculine view of young girls. Her sentences in that book, as far as I can remember, were short, clipped and highly militaristic in feel — giving the novel, which is about high-school cheerleaders, a feeling that you were entering a sort of boot camp. Her latest work, The Turnout, is about young ballerinas. However, here, she writes with an entirely different style, almost feminine with lots of florid prose. The story is almost dreamlike, like a nightmare fairy tale. The ability to write in such different styles makes Abbott an invigorating writer to read. I’ve read four of her books now (Dare Me, The Fever, Give Me Your Hand, and now The Turnout) and each is like an individual snowflake. You get a different flavour each time out, though Abbott has the same preoccupation with each of these books: showing the power and survival instincts of women in very tough circumstances.
The Turnout focuses on two sisters, Dara and Marie Durant, who run a ballet school in an unnamed town or city. They have inherited the school and their home, which is shared with Dara’s husband Charlie (a former dancer himself), from their parents. Marie doesn’t live with Dara and Charlie at the novel’s outset (though she did in the past); she has taken up residence on the third floor of the ballet school. One day, a fire breaks out in one of the school’s studios. A contractor named Derek is recommended to fix the damage, and so the Durant trio hires him. However, the Durants wind up running into complications when more things go wrong, such as a pipe bursting, and thus more and more repair work needs to be done to fix the studio. The problems extend beyond room refinishes though, as Dara catches Derek having sex with Marie in the damaged studio. It’s not long before Derek starts integrating himself into the Durants’ lives by having designs on taking control of their home. A further escalation of tensions ensues.
Megan Abbott has never turned in a home-run winning great read of a novel, but, if anything, she writes simply good books and is, at the very least, reliable and consistent. The Turnout is a bit different from some of the other books of hers I’ve read in that this one simmers for its first two-thirds before the heat is turned up and the pot begins to overflow. (Upon checking, it turns out my review of Give Me Your Hand notes that this same problem pops up in that book, too.) To be honest, if I didn’t have to review this book — because I think it’s lazy to write a critique only having read part of a book — I probably would have bailed on this novel about halfway through. Nothing seemed to be happening other than the fact that the building contractor seemed to be more than a little shady. However, I’m glad that I stuck with this read because it reaches a crescendo that makes it addictive — you won’t be able to put it down if you keep with it. The novel does wrap up plot points nicely, such as the burning question I had during most of my reading: why didn’t the Durants simply fire Derek if he was such a poor contractor and a bit of a monster to boot? There’s a reason for that, but you won’t find it out until near the end of the book.
Still, along with that flaw, there are a few lingering problems with The Turnout, the title of which refers to a ballet term for the ability to rotate the legs outward at the hips (sometimes causing major damage to the body). For one thing, it is hinted early on that Marie might be a hermaphrodite, but that thread is never picked up again in the book. The other knock against the book is that these characters are generally not very likable. Dara and Marie are at odds with each other for most of the read in a sibling rivalry sort of way, and it’s not very pleasurable to read about people who are passive-aggressively fighting with each other. Again, you may have questions about the sister’s and Charlie’s motivations for sticking with the contractor when things are going so badly in terms of the repair job, and, in the early going, that’s a major hurdle for the reader to encounter — and you have to wait for the answer. It might have been better if there were more foreshadowing, though the downside to that is that that might have spoiled the twist that comes at the end. Trade-offs.
In the end, The Turnout is not Megan Abbott’s best work. The real problem is that the first two-thirds of the book are unpleasant with even the young charges of the Durants pulling nasty tricks on each other in envy over who got picked to be the lead dancer in the school’s annual staging of The Nutcracker. Still, if you can get over the obstacles posed by the front and mid-section of the novel, you’ll be in for a wild ride as things gather steam and the book hurls towards an electrifying conclusion. To that end, The Turnout is saved by its ending, making it something of a mediocre read. I wouldn’t say that The Turnout is a bad book, but it is one of Megan Abbott’s lesser efforts. Still, I’ve read a few of her books, and there’s something about her work that makes me keep turning to her again and again. She writes ferociously about women and the problems that they face in society, and she writes a good thriller — even this one has its merits, such as, again, a stellar ending and the rhythmic style of writing that the author employs here. Check out The Turnout if you’re interested in ballet or if you like your psychological thrillers to be on the back burner. It’s not always engaging during its first two-thirds, but once The Turnout starts firing on all of its cylinders, watch out! You’ll be in for quite the wild thrill ride.
Megan Abbott’s The Turnout will be published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons on August 3, 2021.
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You may also be interested in the following review: Megan Abbott’s Give Me Your Hand.
Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
