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Editorial Content for They're Going to Love You

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Norah Piehl

I've always been in awe of people who can convincingly, even eloquently, write criticism or fiction about other art forms, such as visual art, music or dance. In her latest novel, THEY'RE GOING TO LOVE YOU, former dancer Meg Howrey demonstrates that she's more than capable of writing with knowledge and emotion about both the movements of dance and (to me at least) the bafflingly opaque process of choreography, all within the context of a heartbreaking story of family love, betrayal and loss.

The novel's protagonist is Carlisle Martin, who is in her mid-40s and is a well-respected choreographer living in Los Angeles. She's juggling two complicated pieces of news. First, she's just been offered a prestigious commission to choreograph a new ballet to the music of Stravinsky's The Firebird. She's never particularly liked the music, but she knows this is perhaps the opportunity of a lifetime. And second, she's just learned that her father, Robert, is dying.

"Meg Howrey demonstrates that she's more than capable of writing with knowledge and emotion about both the movements of dance and (to me at least) the bafflingly opaque process of choreography..."

Carlisle finds out this last bit of news from her father's husband, James, a charismatic, handsome former dancer and choreographer with whom she herself has a long and tortuous history, which unfolds in the narrative gradually. Her mother, Robert's ex-wife, Isabel, was once a Balanchine dancer, but she never rose out of the corps de ballet and stopped dancing professionally after she had Carlisle. When Carlisle was still very young, Robert and Isabel divorced after Robert and James fell in love.

Carlisle's annual trips to New York City to spend a week or two with Robert and James at their beautiful Greenwich Village brownstone defined her growing-up years and opened her eyes to a new community, one that was increasingly devastated by the AIDS epidemic in those years. She longed for even more time in this glamorous, art-imbued environment, and leveraged her own ballet training to give her more opportunities to spend with Robert and James.

But as Carlisle grew into adulthood, her realizations about their relationship grew more complicated as well, culminating in one horrible summer when she committed a series of betrayals from which the relationship has never recovered. Now, 19 years later, she braces herself for a return to the place and people she was once so close to, knowing that doing so will dredge up feelings and concerns she has tried to keep buried for so long.

Carlisle's story unfolds in parallel chronologies --- one in the present day, as she prepares to visit her father one last time while also wrapping her head around the Firebird commission, and one that drops into moments from her childhood and young adulthood that have shaped where she is today. Along the way, readers see how art informs life and vice versa, how --- through art --- pain, disloyalty and sadness can be transformed.

Teaser

Throughout her childhood, Carlisle Martin got to see her father, Robert, for only a few precious weeks a year when she visited the brownstone apartment in Greenwich Village he shared with his partner, James. Brilliant but troubled, James gave Carlisle an education in all that he held dear in life. Seduced by the heady pull of mentorship and hoping to follow in the footsteps of her mother, Carlisle’s aspiration to become a professional ballet dancer bloomed. However, a passionate love affair created a rift between the family, with shattering consequences that reverberated for decades to come. Nineteen years later, when Carlisle receives a phone call that unravels the events of that fateful summer, she sees with new eyes how her younger self has informed the woman she’s become.

Promo

Throughout her childhood, Carlisle Martin got to see her father, Robert, for only a few precious weeks a year when she visited the brownstone apartment in Greenwich Village he shared with his partner, James. Brilliant but troubled, James gave Carlisle an education in all that he held dear in life. Seduced by the heady pull of mentorship and hoping to follow in the footsteps of her mother, Carlisle’s aspiration to become a professional ballet dancer bloomed. However, a passionate love affair created a rift between the family, with shattering consequences that reverberated for decades to come. Nineteen years later, when Carlisle receives a phone call that unravels the events of that fateful summer, she sees with new eyes how her younger self has informed the woman she’s become.

About the Book

A gripping novel set in the world of professional ballet, New York City during the AIDS crisis and present-day Los Angeles.

Throughout her childhood, Carlisle Martin got to see her father, Robert, for only a few precious weeks a year when she visited the brownstone apartment in Greenwich Village he shared with his partner, James. Brilliant but troubled, James gave Carlisle an education in all that he held dear in life --- literature, music and, most of all, dance.

Seduced by the heady pull of mentorship and hoping to follow in the footsteps of her mother --- a former Balanchine ballerina --- Carlisle’s aspiration to become a professional ballet dancer bloomed. But above all else, she longed to be asked to stay at the house on Bank Street, to be a part of Robert and James’ sophisticated world, even as the AIDS crisis brings devastation to their community. Instead, a passionate love affair created a rift between the family, with shattering consequences that reverberated for decades to come. Nineteen years later, when Carlisle receives a phone call that unravels the events of that fateful summer, she sees with new eyes how her younger self has informed the woman she’s become. 

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 in America and the price of forgiveness, of ambition and of love.

Audiobook available, read by Meg Howrey