The Turnout

Starred review from May 1, 2021

Sisters Dara and Marie Durant have danced ballet their entire lives, taught by their mother at the dance studio she founded. The sisters now own and teach at the studio, while Charlie (Dara's husband and a former ballet dancer) manages its business operations. The three have a very close, nearly claustrophobic relationship, and had been living together in the Durants' childhood home up until Marie's recent move to the studio. A fire damages the studio right at the beginning of Nutcracker season, interrupting their regimented schedule and increasing the already high anxiety level of the students. Derek, a contractor, is hired for repairs; Dara finds him unnerving, while Marie is strongly attracted to him. Using his influence over Marie, Derek begins to interfere with the Durants' business and personal lives. As his presence begins to unearth long-buried family secrets, the Durants must do what they can to restore order. VERDICT Abbott (Give Me Your Hand) 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.--Anitra Gates, Erie Cty. P.L., PA

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2021
The owners of a ballet school have their insular and delicate world torn open. Sisters Marie and Dara Durant own the Durant School of Dance; with matching buns, long necks, and pink tights, they exemplify the traditions of ballet. The classic girl's dream of becoming a ballerina is the reality they've lived since their late mother opened the school in the 1980s. But behind the delicate tulle-clad facade of every ballerina reside the grit, pain, and stamina that drive them to push their bodies to the limit day in and day out. "Ballet was full of dark fairy tales," Abbott writes, and one of those dark tales belongs to Dara's husband, Charlie, who was once her mother's prize student. Charlie now runs the school's daily operations, no longer able to dance due to his chronic pain. With Nutcracker season upon them, tension runs high at the studio. While Marie, Dara, and Charlie have survived many Nutcrackers, this year is a little different--the dark fairy tale comes to life, first in the form of a fire, "brilliant and bright...eating the floor and spitting out kindling shards in its wake." As in many of Abbott's thrillers, a violent catalyst sets off a series of events that brings buried emotions and hidden desires to the surface. The physicality in Abbott's prose gives the mounting tension a heartbeat, from "the clatter of phones" to "the slap of flip-flops." The tension arrives next in the form of Derek, the contractor hired to fix the ruined studio--"the expanse of him was overwhelming." Derek represents every contractor horror story you've ever heard. He takes over the sisters' space, "an invasion and a deconstruction" that threatens to break the delicate balance that keeps the studio--and Marie's and Dara's lives--functioning. Derek invades their mental as well as their physical space, twisting words and promises, making beautiful things unseemly: "Some people liked to make everything dirty. Some people liked to ruin everything." While the life of a ballerina may be "mysterious and private," many illusions are shattered by the end. Though this story lacks some of the unquenchable energy that is Abbott's trademark, 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.

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Starred review from June 7, 2021
Sisters Dara and Marie Durant, the protagonists of this gut-punching noir from Thriller Award winner Abbott (Give Me Your Hand), have been running the Durant School of Dance since the accidental death of their parents. They’re aided by Dara’s husband, Charlie, who was the ballet school’s prize student and who became a surrogate sibling after his mother moved to England. Marie’s move out of the family home to live in the building housing the dance studio changes the dynamic among the three, which is upended even further after a fire damages the school. Derek, an overbearing contractor who assesses the scope of the necessary repairs, hard-sells the Durants on extensive renovations to be funded by the insurance settlement. Dara has cause to worry when Marie becomes attracted to Derek. A suspicious death follows. 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. Agent: Dan Conaway, Writers House.

Starred review from June 1, 2021
From cheerleaders (Dare Me, 2012) through gymnasts (You Will Know Me, 2016) and now to ballerinas, Abbott continues to find lurking horror in the athletic obsessions of teenagers. ""They came with their sprightly dreams and limber bodies and hard little muscles and hungry lean bellies and a desire to enter into the fairy tale that is dance to little girls and a few special little boys."" An innocent rite of childhood or a vision of lambs to the slaughter? It's both, and way more, in Abbott's multifaceted story of the Durant School of Dance, run by two sisters, Dara and Marie, and Dara's husband, Charlie. The women teach the classes--each year's troupe working toward a Christmas performance of The Nutcracker--and Charlie handles the business, his wrecked, former dancer's body a reminder of ""how beautiful things could be all broken inside."" We sense immediately that there's still more breaking to come, inside and out, but the swirling turmoil needs a catalyst to ignite: cue the stranger who comes to town in the form of a contractor hired to repair the trio's house. Abbott brilliantly explores the psychosexual undercurrents throbbing throughout this haunting novel, from the dancers' pointe shoes, ""pink satin fantasies we beat into submission,"" through even The Nutcracker itself, ""a young girl's dream of peering over the precipice into the dark furrow of adulthood."" HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The success of the TV adaptation of Dare Me will spur additional interest in Abbott's latest.

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