“Howrey’s prose invites readers to feel the emotion of each dance, beautifully translating physical and visual art onto the page. [Her] incisive character studies create a heart-wrenching story of love and loss.”
Booklist
“A poignant family story of alienation, regret, and desire. Howrey expertly builds tension, leading the reader to feel alongside Carlisle both the draw of ballet ... Read moreand her anxiety about her reunion with her father. It’s a breathtaking performance.”
Publishers Weekly
Howrey takes the purity of expression in dance and imbues it with all the messy subtleties of great writing to create something new and exquisite. An elegant and deeply affecting tale.
Steven Rowley, author of The Guncle
As elegant, refined and layered as the best of ballets, this novel is a luminous, immersive reading experience. I was fully transported into a world of beauty, rigour, aesthetic and personal challenges. Compelling and captivating, I was unable to put it down.
Lisa Harding “Howrey goes back and forth between Carlisle’s present and her past…landing, like a flawless jeté, on the side of pitch-perfect poignancy. Howrey, a former dancer who joined the Joffrey Ballet when she was just a teenager, writes as movingly about the world of dance as any living author. Even better is her incisive and effortless writing about relationships—between parent and child, between queer lovers—in all their complex mess and beauty. ‘Agony is ordinary,’ thinks Carlisle—this novel is anything but.”
Kirkus
Swift and sinewy and intense—like the ballet dancers who populate it. It’s about vocation, longing, and complicated family love, and it’s guaranteed to make you weep.
Maile Meloy
‘Howrey deftly jumps through decades and lives to write a taut, moving evocation of the love and hurt contained within families and the difficulty of forgiveness.’
Mail on Sunday
“A gripping, deftly constructed drama.”
The Bookseller
“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, author of The Middlesteins
“A stirring coming-of-age tale. Howrey’s writing is precise and eloquent, like finely tuned ballet, but above all, this soul-stirring novel is about love, loyalty and one’s lifelong relationship to art.”
The Seattle Times
“Rooted in authenticity, nuance, and honesty…. By addressing issues like lack of recognition and pay for choreographers, the lack of female choreographers in ballet, and ballet’s body biases, Howrey not only weaves a poignant story, she makes a statement about the way things are and the ways things need to change.”
—Fjord Review
“Reading this potent novel, I kept thinking of the Elvis Costello quote: ‘Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.’ In much the same way, dramatizing the dance world is no easy feat, and Meg Howrey has stuck the landing. They’re Going to Love You is a portrait of passion and beauty at its most electric and unflinching. You’re going to love this book.”
Lauren Mechling, author of How Could She
“They’re Going to Love You is a deeply beautiful book. A lot of writers dream of achieving something like this novel, where art and life and love all seem to be addressed in a way we haven’t read before. It acknowledges its forebears (Portrait of a Lady, for example) with a cultured lightness of touch and with a confidence to converse with novelists (and dancers) that have come before. Writing about dance and making it feel present, alive, and important must be among the trickiest of writerly skills! Meg Howrey choreographs fragile wisdom, passing time, parents and children and lovers and regrets and ambition elegantly and movingly.”
Arthur Phillips, author of The Tragedy of Arthur
"They’re Going to Love You is a devastating and revealing look behind the scenes at the true cost of art—creating it, quitting it, making a life of it. Howrey's moving, taut prose has captured the sacredness and profanity of ballet, family, and of life itself.
Chloe Angyal, author of Turning Pointe
‘A luminous chronicle of betrayal, sacrifice and creative ambition’
The Observer
“Muscular and graceful in equal measure, They’re Going to Love You, like the best fiction, contains everything on every page—a new story, constantly surprising, that in its specificity touches the universal line by line. Howrey’s writing is remarkable, and this novel is a soaring achievement and a total success.”
Lacy Crawford, author of Notes on a Silencing
“As elegant, refined and layered as the best of ballets, this novel is a luminous, immersive reading experience. I was fully transported into a world of beauty, rigour, aesthetic and personal challenges. Compelling and captivating, I was unable to put it down.”
Lisa Harding, author of Bright Burning Things
“I adored They’re Going to Love You so much that a part of me is convinced that Meg Howrey wrote it for me, specifically. This is such a gorgeous novel about being an artist in the modern world, the sacrifices we make and the people we hurt. When I hit the last page, I didn’t want to let these characters go—I adored every word.”
Lindsay Lynch, Parnassus Books
‘Filled with painful and astute self-reflections … Howrey is also often very funny … deeply felt (late) coming-of-age tale about purpose and love’
The i Paper
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