I really enjoyed this one - kind of a mix of Great Believers and Tell the Wolves I’m Home (if the girl had been grown). A young woman gets a phone call that her father is on his deathbed and wants to see her. After 19 years of estrangement. Then we get the backstory, full of love and betrayal and ballet.

They're Going to Love You by Meg Howrey is a beautifully written novel of dance, relationships, family, and the complexity of love. It takes place in the 1970's and 1980's when AIDS was rampant and so many of the gay population were dying.

Carlisle is a choreographer and comes from a family of dancers. Her mother Isabel, danced with Balanchine. Her father Robert, ran a dance company. Robert and Isabel are long divorced and Robert came out as gay many years ago. He has been living for decades with James, his partner. James is a dancer who now teaches dance classes.

Carlisle is unsure of herself. She is over 6 feet tall and feels like an outsider at times. She is an excellent dancer but lacks faith in her abilities. The favorite part of her upbringing was when she could leave her mother's house and spend a few weeks in New York City, staying with James and her father Robert. These times are magical for Carlisle as she gets to listen to James's stories and occasionally attend one of his dance classes.

The novel is about Carlisle's complicity in a betrayal. It was unintentional but resulted in 21 years of estrangement from her father. Now her father is on his deathbed and she plans to travel back and try to iron things out.

Though I loved the novel, there were a few gaps in the narrative. I never fully understood the particulars of the betrayal and why it was so catastrophic. If this had been more clear, I would have rated it a '5'.

I don’t know a lot about the world of ballet, but Meg Howrey who danced ballet professionally, does a wonderful job of leading us through this world and this story of a family of ballet dancers and choreographers. The AIDS epidemic is also depicted in a New York City setting of the 1980’s. While these things are certainly an integral part of the story, the core of the novel for me was the complicated relationships within a family. Father and daughter, mother and daughter, a young girl and her father’s partner, her father and his partner. I didn’t like the characters at times, but did at others. I felt for them at times, was mad at them at other times for expecting so much from each other. I felt the most for Carlisle as a young girl trying to find a place of belonging with her father, Robert and his partner James as she is never made to feel a part of her mother’s new life. “What I totally get is that my father loves James best and James loves Robert best and Isabel loves Yuto and Ben best and everyone I know has someone they love best. I'm no one's best.” Heartbreaking to feel that alienated from your family. I felt for her as an adult estranged from her father for years and distant from her mother, as she still searches for belonging and struggles to know who she is.

All of the characters are burdened in a way over the thing they love by not being able to dance, burdened by their relationships. The art and creativity is stifled by things that happen or by each other. The title is one to reflect on. A well written and satisfying story.

I read this with Diane and it was good to find one that we both quite liked especially after two that we didn’t love so much. As always a pleasure to discuss our thoughts.

I received an advanced copy of this book from Doubleday through NetGalley.

Family dynamics and secrets come to a head in this story about a daughter, her parents and the secret that divides them.

Carlisle so named after a character from a book by her father has always been thought of as an old soul and wiser for her age. Growing up surrounded by ballet: her mother was a ballerina, her father a ballet instructor and his partner James, who live in a brownstone in New York, a place she wants to live in the most, Carlisle Martin wants to be a ballerina but what does that take? And what makes an artist in this day and age? Filled with a tense relationship with her family, her own thwarted ambition and a new route of expression Carlisle must find herself in the throes of a family illness that threatens to subdue or trouble her further.

As a ballet lover and enthusiast I loved being immersed in this world of dance, I’ve always admired the grace and athleticism that ballet encompasses. I was as at times frustrated at the choices and behaviors of the characters which only made me want to get to know them more.

OUT 11/15/2022

This one is slooooow, so be mindful of picking this one up when you have time for a slow-burning lit pick. I wanted to like it more, and there were certainly parts that stood out, but I also feel slightly betrayed by the publisher's blurb. I thought this would be a great companion read to Rebecca Makkai's The Great Believers...a deep dive into the AIDS crisis of the 90s in New York. It is mentioned, but that storyline is definitely on the backburner. Instead there's this big lead up to a betrayal of some sort with the main character, Carlisle, and her dad and his partner. I was a little let down by the big reveal, and this one ultimately fell a little flat for me.

This book is slowww moving without a ton of pay off, but it was incredibly well-crafted and a well-told story. I especially found the nonlinear plot to be very compelling, and I loved the interwovenness of the ballet. It was an interesting look into a different family dynamic than you usually see, and an interesting commentary on death. Slightly disengaging at times, but overall a good read.

Immersed in the world of dance, and estranged from those who love it the most, what is the best way to proceed? Carlisle dreamed of becoming a professional dancer, but it never happened for her. Now she has to go home, when she doesn't know where home actually is.

Anyone with a dance background will enjoy all the nuance that this places on the world of dance and dancers.

I’ll admit, for a majority of my reading experience the writing felt too smart for me. Carlisle as a character was one I struggled to understand. Then, the puzzle pieces came together and I felt so much for her and everything her life has contained.

I found this story quite touching and my eyes did get watery at times. I commend the author so much for putting this book together beautifully.

This book just stabbed me in the heart repeatedly, and I am saying thank you.
This is a story about family, but truly is a commentary on life itself.

We meet our protagonist in her 40s, unsure how her life has chewed her up and spit her out here. Carlisle Martin is a legacy ballerina. Her parent’s careers have blossomed and faded, along with her relationships with them. Her father and his partner James, live on the illustrious Bank Street, a place that has been a dream for Carlisle since she was a girl. With nostalgic novelty, this story feels like a classic. Howrey balances the AIDS crisis, passionate and fracturing love affairs, and familial rifts with a tender and impactful hand.

Meg Howrey weaves a delicate and cutting story through the memory of her heroine, underscored by a deep knowledge of ballet and the weight of love.
She plunges us into the restless wretchedness of living in the unknown.

The sentence construction of the book and the form of the writing is so crisp and so effective. With hard-hitting one-sentence paragraphs and a godly knowledge of pacing, this book was easily devoured.

If you have ever loved an art form, this book is for you. If you have ever stared down the barrel of failure’s gun, this book is for you. If you live each day wondering if what you’re doing is enough, this book is for you.

Add this to your tbr, and pre-order it; you will not regret it. This is going to be the hot book of the month when it releases on November 15th.

This book was a slow burn. It took me awhile to get into it but after I was about halfway I couldn't put it down. I learned more about the world of ballet than I ever expected but that just made it more interesting. Great characters and interesting relationships.

Writing: 4.5/5 Plot: 4/5 Characters: 5/5

This is the story of Carlisle — the ballet-obsessed daughter of dancers whose perfectly tuned body is too tall (at 6’1”) for most companies. The story follows her life from a ten-year old finally reunited with her father and his new (male) partner, both at the absolute center of the dance world, to her pursuit of performance, to the eventual shift in focus of the creative urges towards classical ballet choreography (a field not only dominated by men but with no women whatsoever). We alternate between two time lines — the present day where she learns that her long-estranged father is dying; and the time 19 years past wherein the estrangement began.

The tone is intimate — we are privy to all of Carlisle’s thoughts and confusions — the good, the bad, and the ugly. This is a book of real depth, with a comprehensive view of Carlisle’s rich and complex inner life and a profound and meticulous description of the passions, drive, and motivations of both a dancer and a creator of dances. A rarity. I happen to love ballet but even if you don’t, I think you will love this story of artistic striving. Rather than just a peek, I felt as though I lived within the soul of the artist as I read this book.

Beautiful characters and a real view into a life that is certainly very different than my own. For the balletically minded, I loved the (accurate) references to Mr. B (Balanchine) and the peek into the world of New York City ballet.

The book is filled with beautifully written and insightful phrases — here are a few:
“ ‘What if you weren’t always so hard on yourself?’ a boyfriend once asked me. I agreed my being self-critical had not made me a better person, which was a clever way of being hard on myself about being hard on myself.”

“…Isabel lives for her art, and as far as she’s concerned, what makes an artist is what makes a woman: suffering, devotion, endurance. It’s more fun than it sounds. It’s safer than it sounds. Her world has rules and codes amd structure. It has rewards. There are costumes and flowers. There’s a god, George Balanchine, who loves them all and gives them miraculous ballets to dance.”

“Emotions have a way of collecting and hardening inside us, like neglected grease. We are all smoking stoves.”

“Balanchine famously said there are no mothers-in-law in ballet. Meaning, it’s not an art form suited for portraying complicated family relationships, or psychological subtleties. It’s a place to get away from them, into a purer realm.”

“It’s not hard to feel you’re a good person if you ignore any semblance of an inner life.”

“In the classical repertoire, there’s a motif of large groups of women, often dressed in white, but they represent a kind of moral authority, beautiful or terrible, but not personal. You see the friendship between women only in the rehearsal room or the wings, when women are chatting or laughing or checking in with each other, released from the obligation of being divine representatives.”

“The body, which doesn’t understand time, remembers movement. Once class starts, my body falls into positions like batter filling a pan.”

– They’re Going To Love You by Meg Howrey is a “coming of age” novel of sorts, but distinguishable from most novels of that genre because its plot is retrospective, moving ahead and back in time, without a typical journey from angst to a concluding “aha” moment. The author’s imagery and metaphorical observations are extraordinary, often making connections with the world of dance. Howrey’s pacing of events by using retrospection and, at times, prescience, makes Carlisle, the novel’s protagonist, real, and avoids the tendency of too many modern authors to depict life as coherent. Howrey’s prose is folksy, although sometimes chromatic, and her plot is refreshingly elastic. The novel is good literature in its own right, and not simply a rendition of a ballet.

This is my first and only Meg Howrey novel I've read (chosen mostly because of how gorgeous a cover it is) but I ended up relatively enjoying this. It was tough at times to keep up with the writing. There's no denying the writing itself is beautiful and poetic and it feels very literary and I liked it but if I wasn't in the right ~mood~ for that kind of vibe then it was lost on me and I was just annoyed. The first pretty much half of this book was like that. The pace was excruciatingly slow but when the reason of what happened to lead Carlisle and her father to become estranged is revealed it picked up considerably for me. I was actually interested in the rest of the story. Although, I think the whole situation was just ridiculous and seemed so over dramatic I went with it because I was so interested in reading the rest of what happened. It's obvious Howrey knows a lot about ballet but some of ballet related things just lost my interest because I do not know a lot about ballet.

This is a interesting look at death and what it sometimes takes to forgive. I just wish the first half was as interesting as the second half.

Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday for providing a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

3.5 stars-I received an ARC of this from NetGalley, thanks to them and the publisher!

I really liked Meg Howrey's last novel, The Wanderers, so much so in fact that it was one of the few books over the last few years I decided to buy a copy of (I do probably 90-95% of my new reads through the library). There's a lot to like in this book as well; her writing continues to be beautiful and you can really tell that she's a former dancer-her knowledge of and passion for the subject is very clear. She can set a scene beautifully; you get a great sense of place from the various locations in this book (New York City, Los Angeles, Mexico).

I did have some trouble with the emotional pacing of the story, and I'll readily admit part of it may be my own experiences leaking through (I am also estranged from my father, although from a younger age than Carlisle). As another goodreads reviewer stated, I found her father's reaction to the precipitating event (revealed relatively late in the book) to be incredibly overblown and downright cruel, which really affected my view of the way the remaining events of the book play out. For a story that's constantly referencing the ideas of forgiveness and being forgiven, I was completely unconvinced that Carlisle should be forgiving her father at all at the end of the book, which I think is probably not where I should have fallen by the end of the narrative. The ending does seem to happen a bit abruptly and wrap up a bit too neatly as well.

Overall though, another enjoyable read from Howrey-I loved reading the sections about ballet and especially choreography. Definitely want to go back and read The Cranes Dance now!

I really wanted to love this slow-paced literary novel about a tall ballerina who navigates the complexities of her relationships with her family, but it never really hooked me in. I suspect it was the writing style that fell flat for me. I cared more for the characters at the end but the build-up took too long for such a short read (just shy of 300 pages). It wasn’t for me but it looks like I’m in the minority on this one.

A lovely book about the true cost of art and being an artist. Like a ballet this book can be beautiful, immersive and captivating. A remarkable book.

As a girl, Carlisle idolizes the world her mother left behind, the world in which her father and his husband, James, still serve as central figures. She spends a few weeks a year in this dazzling world, dreaming of the time she will enter it as a star ballerina. As a woman, Carlisle, now a choreographer, struggles with many things - her work, her mother, and her complete ostracism from her father and James, a mysterious something we learn occurred 19 years earlier. When 40-something Carlisle gets a call from James to inform her that her estranged father is dying, she grapples with all these memories and their lingering effects on her current life.

They're Going to Love You is a story about longing and rejection. Meg Howrey nails these feelings and the accompanying feeling of impotence when - longing for love, for belonging - your fate, your feelings, your identity rests in other people's hands. She also nails the feeling of being adrift, something between bewildered and furious, when one's worst fears are confirmed and one is rejected by that very thing for which they have been desperately longing. The prose in this novel is excellent - I haven't read any of this author's other works but I will definitely be adding her backlist to my TBR. Her writing was so smooth and lyrical, while still insightful and charming. I highlighted so many passages where her voice really shone and did something special - surprisingly they were not mainly sections about ballet or dancers, as might be expected (perhaps those special bits flew over my head lol). I also think the relationship that shines the most in this novel is that between Carlisle and her mother. Although not central to the plot, it is very central to Carlisle's character, and the author navigates the murky, often conflicting feelings that come with, well, having a mother.

This book is asking a lot of big questions - how do we process rejection, can it be shaped into something positive or is that a naive thought? Can we forgive those who reject us, and can we do it without punishing them, without feeling superior? Can one ever really deserve forgiveness? And I enjoyed reflecting on them with Carlisle but I don't think the author provided enough answers or enough shading around her own opinions/commentary.

There were other things the author did not nail - the structure drags quite a bit in the middle section because we are following two plotlines: mid-90's Carlisle, where the story mostly resides, and 2016 Carlisle, where Carlisle is... working mostly, and avoiding processing emotions. Which is good to have, but maybe in smaller doses it would've been better.

Additionally, I hate to say it, but the plot simply did not make sense. Central to the story is a rejection of Carlisle by her father - and by extension, James. Earlier in the novel we hear that Robert (her father) did not even tell his family that he is gay, that he is in love with James, that they eventually wed, because if they did not accept James, Robert would be forced to exile his family and this would crush James. Robert says he simply cannot have that happen to James and that loyalty is also a kind of compromising. But then we are expected to swallow that James accepts Carlisle's exile with no problem - CARLISLE. A PERSON HE ACTUALLY KNOWS AND LOVES. And that James could not figure out for himself his central role is this split? And that Robert is fine inflicting this pain on James?? That Robert would not compromise to spare James this cleaving? I guess the anger of men is rarely logical but this simply did not follow the author's own characterization of Robert.

On that note - I could not STAND the last 25% of this novel because I could not stand the powerlessness and lack of agency from Carlisle. Her life is now dictated by the whim (and apathy) of these two powerful/confident men. Not even enough agency to tell her father he's wrong, he can go to hell - no. She becomes a punching bag for Robert's displaced anger and emotion - because Robert cannot admit he IS a less-than-perfect partner, or that James is a less-than-perfect partner. Thus, all of each of the characters' likability was gone. And then what happens at the end? We all get therapy and after 19 years of healing separately we can begin the process of healing together, right??? Nah, in true American (read: transactional) format, Carlisle accepts the house as payment for her death-bed-side forgiveness and becomes super productive at work... Not a single apology was seen. No internal work, healing, or introspection really. I'm still not really sure what to take away from the ending.

I feel like the word "tender" is thrown around a lot in book reviews these days, but Meg Howrey’s They're Going to Love You is truly deserving of the word — from page one, the story rolls over and shows you its softest parts. It's an absolutely gorgeous, touching piece of fiction about so many things (ambition, betrayal, art, love) but what struck me most was Howrey’s rendering of the bonds between children and parents (or the lack thereof) and how they shape us — can we ever recover from our parents’ mistakes? Can we ever outgrow, or outrun, them?

The novel introduces us to young Carlisle Martin, who aspires to one day be a professional ballerina as celebrated as her mother, Isabel, whose parenting style is chilly on a good day. But for a few precious weeks a year, Carlisle is able to escape her home with Isabel in Ohio to visit her father, Robert, in his chic, eclectic home on Bank Street in NYC’s Greenwich Village, where he lives with his longtime partner James. In Carlisle’s eyes, Robert and James live a sophisticated life filled with literature, friends, fancy dinner parties, classical music, and most importantly, dance. She longs to stay with them on Bank Street forever.

But as the AIDS crisis ravages James and Robert’s community in New York, and Carlisle comes of age at a boarding school in New England and reckons with dashed expectations and broken dreams, an unexpected love affair drives a permanent wedge between Robert and Carlisle. Or, if not permanent, a nineteen-year rift, that Carlisle only begins to consider seriously mending once she’s in her 40s and discovers that her father is near the end of his life due to a terminal illness.

They’re Going to Love You asks so many questions: what does it take to be an artist in America? What is the price of forgiveness? Can you ever reclaim a lost dream? Do we ever stop needing our parents to, well, parent us? Though it answers many of them, in its own way, the book still gives its ideas plenty of room to breathe. You’re allowed to come to your own conclusions about the Big Ideas™️ discussed just as Carlisle does, even if you disagree.

I can’t say enough good things about the writing. I’ve never had the pleasure of reading Meg Howrey before, but I finished this with no shortage of awe over her skill with language — not a single word is wasted while traversing the ups and downs of Carlisle’s complex relationships with Robert, James, and Isabel. But, though it’s not over-written, it has heft. This isn’t a light book, but one that flooded me with melancholy. I couldn’t help but weep as I took in the final, stunning passage:

"Listen to this silence, where all movement is contained.

Watch this dance, even if it’s still.

Here it comes. Here it is.

A rising, an exaltation.

All this wreckage. All this gorgeous, unrepeatable wreckage. Life."

This book gutted me. And I couldn’t be more grateful.

Thank you to @netgalley & @doubledaybooks for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

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My sincere gratitude to Net Galley and Doubleday Books for the opportunity to read Meg Howrey's They're Going to Love You. I loved every single thing about this novel.

Beautiful writing and a heartbreaking story. I did find the pacing a bit odd at times but otherwise it was masterfully crafted. The dynamics between Carlisle and her family were refreshing and emotional.