Carlisle Martin dreams of becoming a professional ballet dancer like her mother Isabel. She only gets to see her father Robert, and his brilliant but troubled partner James, for a few precious weeks a year when she visits their enchanted apartment in Greenwich Village.
James educates her in all that he holds dear in life: literature, music, and most of all, dance. As the years go by, Carlisle is desperate to be asked to stay permanently, even as AIDS brings devastation to their community. Instead, a passionate love affair creates a rift between them, with devastating consequences that reverberate for decades to come. Nineteen years later, Carlisle receives a phone call which unravels the fateful events of her life.
They’re Going to Love You is a gripping and gorgeously written novel of heartbreaking intensity. With psychological precision and a masterfully revealed secret at its heart, it asks what it takes to be an artist, and the price of forgiveness, of ambition, and of love.
Meg Howrey is a Los Angeles-based writer of fiction and non-fiction, including previous novels The Wanderers, The Crane Dance and Blind Sight. The Crane Dance was set in the world of ballet, as is They’re Going to Love You. This is no coincidence – Howrey was once a ballet dancer herself with Joffrey Ballet and the City Ballet of Los Angeles. This deeply personal insight into the art of ballet, the techniques, costume, pressures, music and community, permeates this book. Through the complex character of Carlisle and her family of dancers, Howrey has written a moving story that is about ballet, yet so much more.
Howrey moves quite rapidly between settings and timelines, from New York in the 1980s when Carlisle is a child aspiring to be a dancer, to Los Angeles in the present. She explores the way that AIDS affected the tight-knit ballet community in New York. The intricate way Howrey portrays relationships here is what makes this book excel; Carlisle has strained relationships with both parents, as her parents do with each other, and secrets lead to uncomfortable questions and dynamics. The pressures put on Carlisle from a young age, coming from generations of dancers, is also at play in her difficult family dynamics.
Lyrical, moving and at times heartbreaking storyline, They’re Going to Love You is an engrossing read, and a fascinating evocation of the ballet world.
Leave a Reply