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The Worst Book of the Summer

 The worst book of the summer is Megan Abbott's "The Turnout."


I've been a Megan Abbott fan for a long while. Abbott takes unusual settings and makes them into noir nightmares. For example, one thriller concerned a squad of cheerleaders. Another involved a girls' gymnastics team. Still another involved a case of mass psychogenic illness among teen girls--inspired by an actual 2012 case in LeRoy, New York.

The new book, "The Turnout," concerns ballet. All the little girls in Dara's studio want to be Clara in "The Nutcracker." When several girls lose the chance, inevitably, they put razor blades in the winner's ballet flats. They slip laxatives into the winner's lunch.

Meanwhile, all is not well within management. The two teachers are sisters, and it's heavily implied that they have an incestuous past, and then one begins banging the loathsome new contractor. (I have experience with loathsome contractors, so I appreciated this part of the plot.)

Secrets bubble and brew, and tense silences fill the studio, and the writing gets really terrible:

Dara didn't want to talk, to move. She only wanted to stay in this space a moment longer with this boy, this poor broken boy, the red-rimmed furrow she'd see on his neck once they lifted the cord loose, once they let her touch him, that swanling neck. He'd given her so much, after all. More than he had to give. But he'd ruined everything all the same....

Might we just infer that the "boy" is broken? Could we do away with the adjective? What is a swanling neck? How do you "give" more than you have to give? You're asking the wrong person. 

Every year, when the grand pas de deux--the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Prince--begins, the audience's eyes fill with tears. Those shimmering sounds of the celesta, like bells clear and pure, and we are flung backward. Time is conquered for a brief, luminous moment. Dara remembered one parent telling her that prayers from the Russian funeral mass were hidden in its opening bars. WE DON'T HEAR IT, he told her. BUT WE FEEL IT NONETHELESS.

Is a "clear" bell different from a "clear and pure" bell? I'm not sure. How about a "clear and pure and shimmering" bell? Have you ever seen every person in an auditorium burst into tears during "The Nutcracker"? All at once? Alarming, to imagine people "flung backward"--! Is a "luminous" moment inspired by "clear, pure, shimmering" bells....different from just a *standard* moment inspired by clear, pure, shimmering bells? It's a brief, luminous moment--as opposed to lengthier luminous moments (which might happen during "Swan Lake," or "Revelations").

I hated this book so much, I almost had a good time.

But people offering praise aren't doing Megan Abbott any favors.
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