The Turnout

 By Megan Abbott

G.P. Putnam’s Sons         2021

352 pages     Thriller

It has been several days since I finished reading The Turnout by Megan Abbott, and the book is still haunting me! Abbott writes, “Ballet was full of dark fairy tales.” And for Marie and Dara Durant the fairy tale darkness comes true as they prepare their young ballet students for this year’s coming production of the Nutcracker. Marie, Dara, and Dara’s husband Charlie run the school that the girls’ mother started in the 1980s. Charlie was a dancer, but because of a variety of injuries, he can no longer dance. The three live in the same house that the family has owned for years and teach in the building that has been the studio since the beginning. This is the foundation for the "dark fairy tales."

Marie is at odds with her sister and husband and has moved to the attic of the studio to live. The heater she is using causes a fire which burns one of the studios just as the Nutcracker practices begin in earnest. The insurance agent recommends Derek, a local contractor, to do the repairs, and Derek invades the space, the lives, and the minds of Marie, Dara, and Charlie. Tension builds, illusions are shattered, and lives are destroyed.

The Kirkus reviewer says that “the mesmerizing prose will keep you turning the pages.” Abbott does a spectacular job of setting the scene. For example, after Derek begins the work on the ruined studio, she writes, “All day there were thunderous tremors from Studio B, the floors coming up, leaving a haze of debris. The old planks like matchsticks, the smell of mold, mice. The silt from decades of young girls: stray earring studs, hair elastics, dusted ribbons, Band-Aids curled with browned blood.” Every moment is filled with these captivating images.

 While there is no murder to solve, the plot is surprisingly propulsive. Abbott knows a lot about ballet, and while the main plot concerns the relationship between the ballet studio owners and Derek, the contractor, the sub-plot of putting together the Nutcracker ballet with all the tryouts, the practices, the pre-teen girl drama, the injuries, and the costuming is enlightening and repulsive at the same time. I don’t believe that I will ever look at ballet lessons and/or The Nutcracker with the same eyes again. One reviewer notes, “For all its beauty, ballet can be born out of pain.” Abbott explores that concept relentlessly, and the reader moves from fond childhood Nutcracker memories to visions of turned ankles, spiteful girls, and unraveled dreams.

Last week, I had a timeout trip to the family cottage on Lake Michigan. The Turnout was the book I took with me to read. I knew it had been well reviewed, and I felt that it would be an excellent respite book. I was in and out of the house all day and took several walks—every time the tension in the book got to be more than I could stand. It was about 10:30 at night when other family members arrived. According to my Kindle I was 97% through the book. How dare they come when I was this close to getting some final closure on the horrifying events! I excused myself as quickly as I could and retreated to my bedroom to bring the whole sordid affair to the end.

Here is a fascinating interview with Megan Abbott on the Book Page website.

Just published, The Turnout is on many lists of the best books of summer 2021. 

The Book of Eels

 By Patrik Svensson

Ecco     2019

245 pages     Nature

What! I read a book about eels? Who would imagine that could happen? And what’s more—I read it for our book group.

Even more—I loved it!

As I began to read the book, I researched the author, Patrik Svensson, who is a journalist based in Malmo, Sweden. That amazed and surprised me, because I had just finished reading and reviewing Alexander McCall Smith’s Detective Varg book, The Man with the Silver Saab. Detective Varg is based in Malmo, Sweden. What a remarkable coincidence, even though McCall Smith’s book didn’t mention eels.

When reading The Book of Eels, you ponder three topics: the science of eels; the history of the study of eels; and Svensson’s childhood memories of fishing for eels with his father.

Here are things that I learned that I never had known before about eels, because, frankly,  I had never thought about eels—not once in my life. Nor had I ever seen an eel or eaten eel—although apparently my friend Jan has. Although I did eat a tarantula when I was in Cambodia, but that’s another story.

1)      European and American eels are born in the Sargasso Sea, which in case you didn’t know, is a portion of the Atlantic Ocean. Svensson says, “The Sargasso Sea is like a dream: you can rarely pinpoint the moment you enter or exit; all you know is that you’ve been there.” For my part, I didn’t know there was such a place as the Sargasso Sea.

2)      There are four stages in the life of the eel. They are: willow leaf (tiny little things) when they leave the Sargasso Sea and head a thousand miles or more to European or American waters. Next stage is the glass eel. This is what they are when they arrive in fresh water rivers and streams. They are yellow eels for the majority of their lives, which can be 30-50 years. Glass eels are aged eels who return to the Sargasso Sea of their birth to procreate before they die.

3)      Scientists through the ages have pondered the existence of eels and the mysteries surrounding them. Svensson says, “Science has come up against many mysteries, but few have proven as intractable and difficult to solve as the eel. . .Somewhere in the darkness and mud, the eel has managed to hide away from human knowledge.” Among the many unsolved mysteries has been the lack of understanding about how they procreate.

4)      Many famous scientists have studied eels, including Aristotle, Freud, and Rachel Carson.

5)      Eel fishermen and women are a breed apart as well. Svensson remembers with great love and respect fishing with his father as well as attending eel festivals and visiting eel fishing sites. This is the memoir part of the book, and Svensson dos a great job of binding together the science and the history into the memoir as well as engaging the reader in a lot of metaphysical musings.

Here is something that amused me as I was reading The Book of Eels. When I would mention to someone that I was reading about eels, nearly everyone would ask me if I had seen the recent documentary about an octopus, My Octopus Teacher, which won the 2021 Oscar for best documentary. It can be viewed on Netflix. I can understand the connection; both the movie and the book are about elusive animals and about the mystery surrounding them.

The book was a New York Times notable book for 2020. Here is the review. The reviewer called it “strange and nerdy”

Since I read the book, I have come across several interviews with Svensson and several You Tube videos about eels. I think its quite remarkable that this book has developed such a following and expansion of the study of eels. I am so grateful to the member of our book group who introduced me to this wonder of a book. 

Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old

 By Richard J. Leider & David Shapiro

Berrett-Koehler     2021

145 pages     Self-Help

“Everyone is getting older; not everyone is growing older.” This is the premise of a compact, but profound look at aging. The authors, Leider and Shapiro, have been friends for many years. They are intrigued by their own aging as well as the concept of aging in general, and offer a guidebook to thinking about the process, without offering definitive conclusions. My husband and I used the book as our morning reading exercise, taking turns reading and then discussing what we read.

If we have fewer outward responsibilities, the authors propose, then we should have greater inner growth. This has been one of the concepts that my husband and I have struggled with for several years. The struggle has never been more pronounced than when we were reading this book. My husband has always felt that he would work at his business forever. Yet, now that he is in his 80s, he has begun to rethink his purpose. Each day, as we read, he considered some alternatives; finally he announced that he was going to stop working on Fridays. I almost fell over with surprise. Now we will see if he is going to follow the plan.

On the other hand, I have been completely retired from my career as a librarian for several years, and this year, I retired from my editing business. The retirement was very short-lived, because family members needed covid-related help with children. I felt lucky that my schedule was flexible enough that I could help out. The points made in Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old helped me in my decision-making. One of the authors’ points is that often retirees feel a loss of relevance. Lucky for me, I still feel very relevant.

Finally, the last chapters of the book concern death and dying, and we were able to have some significant conversations about what we still wanted to do, but also how we felt about dying. There are excellent discussion questions in the last chapter: “1) What do you think happens when you die? 2) How would you like to die? 3) What gifts do you want to leave the world before you die?” These questions offered us several hours of thought and discussion. As we read each morning, we felt our relationship grow closer and our conversations become more significant. We would certainly encourage couples to have these discussions. I am very grateful to the authors for opening these doors for us. I appreciated their personal stories as well as the people they quoted. The final discussion questions are excellent.

“The path of purposeful aging is a choice to wake up every day with the intention to grow and give.”

An interview with the authors.