They're Going to Love You
A Novel
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
A NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S CHOICE • A BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK • A gripping novel set in the world of professional ballet, New York City during the AIDS crisis, and present-day Los Angeles. • "Beautiful...Howrey, a former dancer with the Joffrey Ballet, proves herself a talented choreographer in her own right...[A] finger-trap puzzle of a plot."—New York Times Book Review
“They’re Going to Love You is my idea of a perfect book. It is about art, life, death, love, and family and it is beautifully and sharply written. I cried several times while reading it, and was sorry to let it go when I was done. I cannot recommend it enough.” —Jami Attenberg, New York Times bestselling author of The Middlesteins and All This Could Be Yours
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’s 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Howrey (The Wanderers) delivers a poignant family story of alienation, regret, and desire. Carlisle Martin, 43, a Los Angeles choreographer, has learned that her father, Robert, whom she hasn't seen for 19 years, is dying. As the daughter of two professional ballet dancers, Carlisle was a natural talent, and was especially driven to impress the astute Robert and his effusive partner, James, a ballet teacher. Growing up, she visited Robert and James two weeks a year (from her home in Ohio with her mother), relishing in the magic of their decadent Greenwich Village home. She especially craved James's stories and strived to be closer to the pair. As she narrates in a flashback of her life at 24: "My father, I love, and James I sort of want to be. Maybe I mean: have?" But then she did something Robert won't forgive her for (the details of which don't come out till much later), and went on to build a career without the help of her family. Now, she learns she might inherit Robert and James's house, according to the terms of her grandfather's trust, causing a painful flood of memories and tension with the couple, whom she assumes want her to give the house to James. The fraught scenes provoke staggering bursts of emotion, such as a flashback to Carlisle at 12 returning from New York to Ohio and realizing she doesn't feel like she belongs with her mother's new family. Howrey expertly builds tension, leading the reader to feel alongside Carlisle both the draw of ballet and her anxiety about her reunion with her father. It's a breathtaking performance.