Meg HowreyReseñas

This is a story about the daughter of two dancers, a story about a dance between art and legacy, love and ambition, betrayal and forgiveness. It’s beautifully choreographed—although, not without its flaws—as it explores the legacy of creating art and the price of putting it out into the world. The story begins with James and, as he is charming and charismatic, enchants you right into this world of ballet. Carlisle, James’s husband’s daughter, is the sole narrator and, I think, a major flaw since she’s the blandest of all the characters. While the details of her betrayal and reason for a 19-year estrangement from her father, Robert, create some suspense, I was really much more interested in Robert and James’ story. I wanted all of the dramatic details of their love affair that survives decades of important moments for the queer community: the AIDS epidemic, “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” Marriage Equality Act. Instead, their relationship, which was one of the most interesting parts, felt somewhat incomplete. Regardless, this was still an enjoyable read—the side characters are worth being center-stage and the glimpse inside the life of artists is just as captivating.

A very fun read. Music, mystery, intrigue and sexy aristocrats. You'll either love or hate this book, I think. It has a quirky style that I enjoy, but (judging from other reviews) just grates for some.

The author interview here on Goodreads is a fair preview of the weird-ity you might expect. If it makes you smile, then this book might be for you. https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/3526759-an-interview-with-magnus

PRE-SPOILERS PART: Meg Howrey has done perhaps the best job of relating the current thinking/engineering of getting humans to Mars. And she does so without going into in-the-weeds tech jargon. But if you are at all familiar with the various humans-to-mars mission ideas swirling around these days, you will recognize almost everything she describes and appreciate the accuracy. But more importantly, The Wanderers is about the interior lives of the astronauts and their families. It is obvious to me that Howrey has read multiple astronaut autobiographies as well as works by aerospace psychologists. She really understands how astronauts think. If you grew up wanting to be an astronaut, or have ever seriously pursued the dream of space travel, or have done work that supports those who travel in space, then you will find beautiful prose here that may seem like someone pulled secrets from your soul.
Oh, and lot of the dialog is damned funny.
[Audiobook note: The reader, Mozhan Marno, is quite good and handles the various accents (Russian, Japanese) superbly.]


SPOILERS PART: Like [book:The Martian|18007564], The Wanderers has no villain. The conflict and suspense come merely from the situations in which the astronaut trainees and their family members find themselves. I find this immensely refreshing. I also appreciate that Howrey avoids most of the all-too-familiar tropes of Mars-mission fiction: the last-minute crewmember swap-out, the crewmember who goes nuts, the catastrophic dust storm, some bio-contamination from Mars that threatens the crew, etc. Of course, she avoids this in part by writing not about an actual mission to Mars, but a simulation of one. Or does she?


SUPER-SPOILERY PART: Seriously, don't read this until after you finish the book.



No, really. I meant it. Have you finished the book?



Okay. It was just a simulation, and Sergei, Helen, and Yoshi would have been able to quickly realize why based on physics.




You really finished the book? Because I'm gonna drop the spoiler here. Alright then.






In the story, the astronauts are told that Prime engineers have created tools that weigh 38% of what they do on Earth to help with the simulated feeling of being on Mars, and have weighted the boots of the astronauts' Mars exosuits to prevent injury-inducing running and jumping while working outside. But whether inside the "lander" or outside on "Mars", there is no way to change the rate at which things fall. If the astronauts had really been sent to Mars, they would have known it by the simple fact that anything dropped would fall to the ground much more slowly than on Earth.

BUT it is to Howrey's credit that I didn't even start worrying about this question until almost the last few pages of the book. I was so swept up in the story that my skepticism was dampened. There is some seriously good writing here.

Much darker and more ballet-y than Howrey's more recent ballet novel (They're Going to Love You, which I loved) and also less original -- it felt pretty of a kind with others in the "woman's descent in mental illness" genre. Which isn't to say that it wasn't good! It was very good. I found the voice of charmingly cynical narrator Kate both compelling and entertaining, and the descriptions of Gwen's illness were genuinely quite eerie (the mouse thing! what the fuck!!!). If you're looking for something creepy and thriller-y, but not an actual honest-to-god thriller, this would be a good pick.

A year ago, I was going my rounds of the local little libraries when I found what sounded like a very good book. Ballet! Fraught relationships! A mysterious event from the past that the narration will coyly avoid clarifying until the split-timeline climax!

This is not that book. (That book was The Ballerinas by Rachel Kepelke-Dale, and it wasn't any good at all.) This book is what I wanted that book to be. Which is very lucky for me, because I bought this book new (!!!!) for full price and everything.

Meg Howrey does a great job at constructing emotionally complex relationships between her characters. Carlisle's desire for her fathers' love and loyalty—and her complementary neglect of her relationship with her mother—felt realistically painful and naive. And the invisible weight of misogyny, both in her personal and professional relationships, felt—for lack of a better word—very real. Reminiscent of the feeling I had reading Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels—yes, this person gets it, yes, this person lives in the world I live in. It's not quite a favorite, but I'm sure I'll be recommending it people. It would make a great book club read.

As for my one and only negative note: the more books I read, the more I sour on nonlinearity. It feels like a cheap ploy for tension, like the author doesn't trust the narrative they've constructed to stand on its own merits. I think I would have liked this better if it were told more straightforwardly. The emotional consequences of Carlisle's estrangement from her fathers would have been weightier if the narrative lingered there longer, instead of resolving the estrangement as soon as we understand why and how it happened.

I am about as graceful as a duck in a tutu, wobbly and pigeon-toed but that doesn't stop me from being attracted to books set in the professional dance world. There's something so dreamy about ballerinas, pancake tutus, pointe shoes, and the seemingly effortless way they glide across a stage. But all that ethereal grace and art hide a tough and punishing underside: stress on the body, serious athletics, hard work, body expectations both for weight and height, dedication, and a short professional window. Meg Howrey's remarkable novel of a father and daughter's relationship, They're Going to Love You, revolves around this competitive and unforgiving world.

Told from the perspective of an adult Carlisle, and alternating between her past and present, this is a story of family drama, love, belonging, betrayal, the sometimes fragile bond of the parent/child relationship, finding peace, and ballet. Carlisle is the daughter of a former Ballanchine ballerina and a noted choreographer. Her parents divorced when she was young and she only got to see her father and his partner James for a few weeks in the summer. She adored life with her father and James, who recognized her natural talent and mentored her in the dance world. She wanted more than anything to belong to them and to their NYC dance world, despite the devastation that AIDS was wreaking in it, and she seemed to be well on her way to becoming a professional ballerina herself. But something happened both professionally and personally and she's been estranged from her father and James for years when she receives a phone call from James telling her that her father is dying and she should come back to NYC to say goodbye.

The cause of the estrangement is only slowly revealed as Carlisle relives for the reader the summer that the rupture occurred. She's a fascinating character and the novel is first person so we see all of her hestitations, questions, and regrets. It's easy to see that even as a 40 or 50 year old woman, she's still looking to be someone's first choice (James is her father's first choice and her step-father and half brother are her mother's). As she prepares to go to New York to see her father again, can she put the past aside, forgive, and finally choose herself no matter what awaits her? The ballet pieces are interesting and technical, but not too technical for non-dancers. The writing itself is elegant and balletic and the story presents common themes in intriguing new ways.

This novel is one of the Women's National Book Association's Great Group Reads for 2023.

Just trying to fill time before third installment of discovery of....and this did not do it for me. It was a cross between Even Cowgirls get the Blues and hitchhiker guide with like a dose of academia. There was also a book I can't remember quite that reminds me of this...something about a book and an end and Y. Anywho...I did not finish this boom and hate to rate if I don't but I read very nearly to the end and I wouldn't recommend it past page 100. This is a great example of excellent world building and then not being able to follow through with the rest of the story. Now that I think about this novel in terms of Master and M...I might revisit and finish.

In 2016, Carlisle Martin is a choreographer in LA who gets the call that her father Robert is dying. They have been estranged for nineteen years; when Carlisle was young, she lived with her mother, a former ballerina, and visited Robert and James in their Bank Street apartment in New York a couple times a year. Carlisle always wanted to be truly part of their life, yet remained outside as the AIDS crisis ravaged Robert and James' generation.

*Spoiler alert*
When Carlisle is 24, James asks her to go to Mexico to see a young, straight dancer, Alex; Robert thought there was something between them and insisted that James cut off contact with him. Carlisle goes, but instead of delivering James' package to Alex - a notebook with his choreography - she and Alex fall in love. Meanwhile, back at home, James attempts suicide, and Robert blames Carlisle for leaving him alone and for getting involved with Alex - even though James didn't know about them. This leads to their estrangement. With Robert on his deathbed, is forgiveness - for either of them - possible? Carlisle muses as she travels from LA to New York, calling on her mother Isabel and her friend Freya, and at the same time wondering how to create new, original choreography for Firebird.

See also: The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai, Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

Quotes

"At a certain point...you realize your moment has passed. You won't achieve those dreams of youth. You have to make new dreams. But I don't have any new dreams." (James to Carlisle, 7)

My curiosity is for the imaginative, not the actual, and I sometimes don't notice real things. Perhaps all children are like this. (17)

What a silly game. If I prove my loneliness, I might earn the right to be sad? (29)

My father is not afraid to fight, or hold a grudge. (45)

[Isabel] can make her face impressively blank, totally expressionless, but in such a way it's clear she's gone into some other mental room to have opinions. (52)

It is hard to know what is depression, and what is an appropriate response to a plague on your house. (90)

"For every artist, there's a ceiling. As a teacher, your role is to make the very best of what is there." (98)

"Loyalty isn't only about sticking by someone no matter what....Loyalty is also about making sacrifices for the other person. That's what makes a family." (Robert to Carlisle, 129)

Sometimes, you make things to keep yourself company. (132)

"Not everything is a test," she says gently. "Of how much you can stand on your own." (Freya to Carlisle, 135)

"He has a fear, and then this compulsion to make the fear true." (James to Carlisle, 147)

Against all the sorrow in the world, we should behave with love and forgiveness, even if we don't always feel it. (219)

"It's very weird. How you can not want something, and also not let go of it. Like being sad about a dream you no longer have." (Carlisle to James, 261)½

A phone call that her father is dying brings Carlisle back to the last time she spoke to him — almost 20 years ago. Now a choreographer, Carlisle relives her childhood with her ex-ballet dancer mother and her yearly visits to New York to stay with her father and his long-time boyfriend who are also both ex-dancers. In They’re Going to Love You, author Meg Howry masterfully builds up to the events that cause the estrangement with moments of memory mixed with the current time. This is a beautiful book about ballet, family, love, and finding peace with ourselves.

Excellent. Revealing of the real life of ballet professionals.

Sometimes a book just grows on you and the plot's upward trajectory becomes trumphant. Carlisle (ugh, name) is the daughter of ballet dancers, though they split up when she's young when her father falls in love with a male dancer. She just knows dance in her blood and bones, from her parents and from her own body, even though she's shut out of performing when she reaches her adult height of six feet, one inch - too tall to be lifted. During the early 1980's, as AIDS begins to peel off artistic lives, and after failing to gain employment with any ballet companies, Carlisle is floundering when she's called to her father's West Village brownstone when his lover, James, becomes involved with a straight young male dancer. Her intervention just muddles everything and her father banishes her from their lives. Twenty years later, as she has found fulfillment and professional success as a choreographer, James calls Carlisle back to New York to see her father before his imminent death. Carlisle is a remarkable character, struggling to remain true to herself despite having been thrust away from her parents and into independence too early. The writing is compelling and the ending satisfying; a truly intense dive into the rarified ballet universe.

Quotes: "The one who needs the least will always hold the power."

"Once class starts, my body falls into positions like batter filling a pan."½

They’re Going to Love You is a story of family, ambition and feeling an outsider than spans the breadth of America from the 1980s to current day. It covers huge dramas and the mundaneness of everyday life, all against the backdrop of ballet and dance.

Carlisle is the main character and the story jumps between the present day back to her youth in the 1980s, following her growth until the past meets present. It describes her parents’ relationship in the ballet scene in New York and their split. Her father falls in love with James, and Carlisle spends her summers with them in New York. Carlisle finds James fascinating, her parents much less so. But there is something that happens in her twenties that separates her from her father and James which is alluded to for most of the book, lauded as the ultimate betrayal. They don’t speak for years until Carlisle receives a call that her father is dying. It comes just as she’s offered the biggest breakthrough of her career. Can she forgive? Will she be forgiven?

A major part of the plot is dance, and in particular, ballet. How it led to success or failure, dreams made or broken. I am really not a fan of either so the descriptions of ballet positions, dance moves and choreography didn’t interest me. I much preferred the exploration of each character’s feelings of how dance left them broken or with regrets that interplayed with their lives. All the main characters have them, from Carlisle’s grandmother who wanted a ballet career for her daughter to James, who now teaches. There is some exploration of the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York amongst gay men which was moving and terrifying. I would have liked to read more of this, but I think it would have been difficult from the first person point of view of Carlisle as a child.

They’re Going to Love You is somewhat uneven in its pacing for me. I loved the first introduction to 1980s New York, but I found current day Carlisle somewhat boring as she mused over choreography. The novel is quite slow in the middle until the crucial story to the narrative is told. The grand betrayal that it alluded to takes a long time to reveal, and when it did, it didn’t really seem all that shocking. (Carlisle’s handling of it was childish and handled badly). It was the misunderstandings that caused the broken relationship between her and her father and it’s a tangle in the last section to unravel them. The final scenes as Carlisle makes peace with her family and everyone begins to understand and accept the past are the strongest. They are emotional, yet realistic. Howrey writes beautifully and with feeling in every sentence. If you’re a fan of ballet, you’ll devour this story.

Thank you to Bloomsbury for the copy of this book. My review is honest.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com½

Fantasy, adventure, music, political intrigue, a protagonist named Sarah, and Prague as the setting? I couldn’t read this book fast enough! Sarah is, by far, one of my favorite protagonists I’ve ever been introduced to, tied for the top spot with Celaena of Throne of Glass fame and Amy Haskel of Diana Peterfreund’s Ivy League series. She fears little and is unabashedly who she wants to be. Sarah doesn’t apologize for being herself, even when her brazen personality can offend even the most liberal contemporary, and that is what I love most about her.

Prague is my top travel wishlist destination and the more I read about it, in both fiction and nonfiction works, the more my desire to see the city of dark magic deepens. Sarah experiences the city in all its splendors, and it’s not so splendid features as well. Beethoven is her guide as she readies a music exhibit for the Lobkowicz Palace museum after the former curator, her mentor, is found dead outside the palace from an apparent suicide attempt. Before long, Sarah discovers there is so much more to the story when she retraces her mentor’s, and Beethoven’s, steps throughout the city upon discovering a time shifting drug one evening with the dashing prince Max.

A great deal happens in this book and there are about ten different stories being intertwined together but that made me enjoy it more. I cannot stand stories where it is all about the main character and written as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist. While City of Dark Magic may take it a little too far in the opposite direction, it meant that I never found a boring moment the entire time I was reading. Really, I cannot emphasize how much I love this book and all the magnificently entertaining intertwining stories.

Sigh..... I do NOT like reviewing books I didn't enjoy.
New York in the 1980's. Twelve year old Carlisle Martin has her heart set on being a professional ballerina but is also seduced by her father & his partner, James's world. Even as the AIDs epidemic gets a grip on the city, leaving devastation in it's wake. Fast forward a few years & an act of betrayal has torn them apart. Nineteen years later, Carlisle gets a phone call from James. Her father, Robert, is dying & it's time for reparations to be made.
So yeah, I just didn't like this. I didn't find it that interesting. It has good bones but it needs fleshing out. It took a bit long to get to the heart of the story, ie, the conflict that drives a wedge between the three. I also thought that Robert's reaction to Carlisle's mistake was rather overblown & a bit uncalled for really. And the rest of the story was a bit rushed & overly dramatic. I usually love stories with dance at the heart & I did enjoy those aspects but since my knowledge of ballet is fairly basic I didn't understand a lot of it ....... Yeah, nah.

Good book.

Pretty good. Could be a movie

I forced myself to finish this. Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered.

It's sad that my 200th book of the year wasn't a good one.

Oh, it has its moments. It's actually quite well-written, and brilliantly observed, if I'm going to be honest.

But, it's a typical "literary" novel: long on observation and thought, really thin on plot and wraps up with a non-ending ending.

Yeah, there's some wrap up, yeah, there's some plot, but I realized about a third of the way through what was coming...or, not coming, as it turns out...and almost set the book aside.

I'm glad I didn't, simply for the writing, but damn it, I really do prefer a book where something other than thought happens.

Three astronauts have been selected for the first crewed mission to Mars. Well, they might be going to Mars. The idea is that first they will do a simulated version of the trip, complete with full-length stints in rather cramped spaceships, while they and their families are observed to see how well they handle it.

I must admit, this wasn't quite what I was expecting. Despite having seen it described as a "psychological novel," I was somehow expecting a more compelling sort of narrative, a little bit more plot. Indeed, such plot as there was didn't exactly work for me, as there's an ambiguous but important aspect to things that I just couldn't really accept at all.

But even the stuff that doesn't work on a plot level does work beautifully on a thematic one. Ultimately, this isn't a novel about training to go to Mars, but rather one about all the ways in which people try to shape their own selves into who they think they should be, and about the faces we present to each other. The Mars simulation idea is a wonderful metaphor for that, and Howrey approaches it in some complicated, insightful ways I don't think I've ever seen done before.

The writing duo of Meg Howrey and Christina Lynch are back with another fantasy novel, switching the main story to another amazing central European city, Vienna. Dr. Sarah Weston is now trying to save her young piano prodigy friend, Pollina seeking the help of a Viennese doctor, Bettina Muller. Muller disappears, but promises to help Pollina, if Sarah Weston helps her. Sarah is quickly dragged into a big mystery involving Austrian gentry, a transgender, historical figures, time travel, killings, with her friends Nico and ex-lover Max returning to assist. My favorite line: "Constantly enjoy life! You're longer dead than alive!"

Prague is a great backdrop for a fantasy novel. Sarah Weston is recruited to help catalog the original works of Beethoven for the Lobkowicz family musuem when her thesis advisor dies under mysterious circumstances. Like many of today's musical geniuses, it is implied that Beethoven was a drug addict, which Sarah discovers while mentally time-traveling under the influence herself. Throw in a little espionage, a lot of sex and murder, cover-ups, and you have the makings of this novel. From the writing, I was able to discern that this book was written by two women, using a nom de plume. This should have been better.

fiction (human drama astronauts; one of the main characters has Asperger's).

The author used the premise of a 7 months long dress rehearsal for a trip to Mars by isolating three engineer astronauts: a Russian man, a Japanese man, and an American woman, in a simulation of the voyage to come. The narrative also closely followed two of their children, a teen and a young adult, as well as the Japanese man's wife. Under the guise of this simulated voyage, the reader watches the astronauts and their relatives explore their own identities and how they related to each other. I can't say that the book moved me much emotionally, probably because I am not a parent and much of this book explored parental feelings. But it was original and intellectually stimulating.

Exquisite. I was completely engrossed from the first page. Excellent job of testing the boundaries of sanity and creativity.

A novel with ever-shifting perspectives and a bit of epistolary stuff thrown in, about a group of astronauts participating in a simulation of a voyage to Mars, and their families. Really absorbing and thought-provoking about family and the human condition. Slightly less sciencey than expected.