I'm Ann Bocock, and welcome to "Between The Covers."

Megan Abbott is here.

She's the award-winning author of 10 novels.

She's the co-creator and executive producer of Netflix's "Dare Me," which is based on her bestselling novel, and a staff writer on HBO's "The Deuce."

She is a master at exploring the dark side of competition.

In previous books, she gave us chilling looks at gymnastics and cheerleading.

Well, her latest book, "The Turnout," is a psychological thriller focused on the darker side of ballet.

Megan Abbott, welcome to "Between The Covers."

Thank you for being here.

Thank you so much for having me.

All right, I wanna just go back just a little bit.

The book before "Dare Me" was terrifying.

It's this exclusive, obsessive, dangerous world of cheerleading.

You also did it with gymnastics, and now, "The Turnout."

So first of all, for people who don't understand the title, what is the turnout?

So the turnout is this sort of critical development as a young dancer, which is sort of the ability to rotate your legs 180 degrees while your hips remain and your hips too go out, so you can sort of fully dimensionalize the ballet form.

So it really requires work and exertion, and it's very challenging.

It's usually for dancers around the age of 11, 12 or so.

They have to achieve that 180 degrees to be a prima ballerina.

Which is not a normal thing to do, 180 degrees.

Your books, you write with such feeling about this.

And let's talk gymnastics and cheerleading, and now dance.

Lends me to believe that you have an athletic background?

No, I mean, it truly is...

I mean, I took a year of ballet, and I can't say I had any experience with sports.

I was always very bad at physical things, and didn't have that relationship with my body, that athletes and dancers seem to have where they seem to have or be developing such a mastery over it.

So for me, it's always been this sort of wish fulfillment to go into these worlds that I never had access to that seemed very exotic to me and to be among those who have this very different relationship with their body.

Their body is their art, and that's very dazzling to me.

And so it's a bit of a fantasy, I suppose.

Well, in "The Turnout," we have twin sisters, and they have their glamorous dancer mother.

Now, without giving a lot away, I'd like for you to take it from there and tell me about these twins, their mother, and their father.

How did they grow up?

What was this family dynamic?

Well, they grew up in a very insular home.

They're very close, Dara and Marie, and their mother was a dancer and is sort of raising them to be dancers, and they're homeschooled.

And they live entirely in the world of ballet.

Their father is mostly absent and doesn't really have a place there.

Their mother, who's rather glamorous and hypnotic and sort of a mesmeric figure, really runs their life.

In the present day, she has long passed.

That's not a spoiler, but she's still looms very large for them.

She really shaped them.

And even though they're adults now and Dara has a husband of her own, they're still really under her thrall.

There's a tragic accident, something terrible happens, and the parents die.

The kids, these young girls, inherit their mother's dance studio.

So that happens.

Now, it's "Nutcracker" season.

And for people that may be don't understand what that means, that's the moneymaker.

That's the hook for these these dance studios.

Tell me about "Nutcracker: season.

And did you specifically choose that, because it's familiar to us?

Yes, it certainly was the first ballet I saw and had that tiny part one year in it, and it was really my first and I think most people's first introduction to ballet.

If people seen one ballet, that's the one.

It's become this holiday tradition, and the girls in their velvet dresses and the spectacle of it.

I picked it for story purposes, because of the familiarity, as you say, but also, as you say, because it is how these dance schools make all their money, not just the ticket sales, but it's a recruitment tool.

The little girls in the audience will be taking classes there next year.

So, it has this powerful role, and schools sort of live or die on their ability to have a "Nutcracker" production.

But what I have not been prepared for, I had not really thought about the ballet itself other than the beautiful numbers that are also famous, the "Sugar Plum Fairy."

I hadn't really thought about the theme of the story.

And it was really, as I started working on the book, it had all these nuances and complications that seem to reflect on the novel I was writing and about Dara and Marie, because it is so much a coming of age ballet story.

So it ended up being a fortuitous choice.

That it was.

There's a section in the beginning, because you've kind of alluded to this, that it's "Nutcracker" season.

All the little girls want to be in this show, but there's a section that talks about the business of ballet, and it begins with, "Every girl wants to be a ballerina."

If you could be so kind to read this, because we'd love to hear it in your words.

Absolutely.

That was one of the first lines I had for the book, 'cause it was ringing in my head.

So let's start with that.

"Every girl wants to be a ballerina.

"It was always the photograph that first drew them in.

"Dark Dara and pale Marie, "their heads tilted against each other, "matching buns, their feet and releve.

"The photograph was the first thing you saw "when you walked into the studio lobby, "or clicked on the website, "or picked up the community circular, "or the sleek lifestyle magazine and saw the glossy ad "in the back.

"Charlie had taken the photograph "and everyone talked about it.

"'So striking,' everyone would say.

"'Ethereal,' some would even venture.

"The littlest girls padding in their ballet pinks "would stare up at the photo mounted in the lobby, "fingers in their mouths like fairy princesses.

"So Charlie took more photos for the local paper, "which featured them regularly for their marketing materials "as the school grew in size.

"But the photos were always fundamentally the same, "dark Dara and pale Marie poised close, touching.

"Once a marketing person offered them a free consultation.

"After observing them in the studio one summer day, "sweating in the corner, wilting on the high stool "they'd given him, "he spoke to Charlie under his breath for a long time.

"That was how they ended up with the photo of Dara "and Marie at the end of a long day, "after dancing together in the quiet studio, "their body's loose, their leotards soaked through.

"Charlie shot them collapsed upon each other on the floor, "their faces pink with pleasure.

"'Move closer,' he said from behind the camera.

"'Closer still, closer still.'

"Back then, it seemed impossible to be any closer.

"The three of them so entwined.

"Charlie was Dara's husband, "but he was also so much more.

"Dara, Marie, and Charlie, "their days spent together at the studio, "their nights in their childhood home back then.

"After the shoot, "looking at the images on Charlie's computer, "Dara hesitated, imagining what their mother might say "of the photos, their bruises and blisters "and blackened toenails hidden, "their bodies so smooth and perfect and fair.

"'Are you sure?'

Dara asked.

"'They tell a story,' Charlie said.

"'They sell a story,' Marie added, "snapping her leotard against her damp skin."

Thank you, Megan.

That was wonderful.

I'm gonna go back to the "Nutcracker" for just a minute.

There's Clara up there.

That is the coveted role.

And reading this, it was like be careful what you wish for, because that's where the mean girls come out.

And in your books, you let us know that girls, that women, show aggression and rage and violence, correct?

Yeah.

It's always felt for so long that young girls and women were supposed to be ashamed for having strong feelings.

Little girls are supposed to be pleasing.

They're supposed to make everyone happy.

And, of course, we all know it's so much messier than that and complicated.

So I really always want to give voice to that, that often the smile is just a mask and it hides so much more and to give girls their full range of feeling including the bad feelings, quote, unquote, bad feelings.

Quote, unquote, bad feelings.

You reference another "Nutcracker" book, and that's the Hoffmann book, which I don't know if everyone understands.

This is a really dark kids book about the "Nutcracker" stories.

Did you gravitate to fairytales as a kid?

I did.

It's always surprising when we go back and look at them.

They've often been sanitized into Disney versions where they're very safe for everybody and happy and sunny with a happy ending.

But when you go back and look at any of the "Grimms' Fairy Tales" or this is the E. T. A. Hoffmann one, they're really dark and they're very much about big stuff.

And the "Nutcracker," the original story, is really about the young girl on the precipice of womanhood and how confusing that time is and how she feels both excited to enter adulthood, but we see adulthood is frightening.

This is through the essence of it's like "Little Red Riding Hood."

It's been the essence of, I think, what we find as kids and fairytales.

They're telling us what to beware of.

They're trying to guide us on the right path and warn us dangers.

I think there's a reason that kids are still so drawn to them.

All right, we have to talk about toe shoes, because I am never going to look at a ballerina on point in the same way again.

First of all, who knew that they mutilate these shoes when they take them out of the box.

This was my greatest fascination.

Anybody can go on YouTube and see this done, but you have to prepare the toe shoe to be worn.

And you can go and see these beautiful factories in France or Italy where they make them.

They make them out of satin and paper and glue.

And these are magical, beautiful objects.

And what a dancer has to do is make that object become her foot essentially.

It has to become one with her foot.

Each dancer has their own ritual of doing that, but it's elaborate, breaking the shoe in, breaking everything in, tying the ribbons on doing all these things to modify it to make it feel comfortable for them, sometimes even taking a hammer as Marie does, which some dancers would never do that.

But a lot of the ones I found did.

So yeah, it's essentially you're making this communion.

You're fusing your foot to the shoe.

These shoes don't last long.

They can last one performance occasionally, but they're not meant to be these objects of beauty.

They're meant to be used.

And this became a real fascination for me in watching these dancers with their ritual, which felt almost religious the way they would take these steps to get the shoe right for their performance.

It brings a whole new meaning to breaking in a shoe.

And as you said, they throw them them away.

Fascinating.

You have us look at the pain that can not be separated from the art in this book.

There is physical pain.

There is also mental pain.

The pressure is enormous.

And when I'm reading this, I kept thinking about what we had seen in real life, Simone Biles, for instance, the pressure that she felt as well.

Do you see the parallel?

I do.

When that happened over the summer, it was right when the book was coming out and it felt uncanny.

I have written a book about gymnastics, and I always heard about that term, the twisties, which is sort of loosening your center of gravity in the middle of a stunt.

And there's variations on that in all sports and dance where you know when it's happening, and then you need the exit.

This is you need to get out of this alive, because you've really lost the center of things in a terrifying moment.

And it is a mental game just as much as it is a physical one.

And I thought it was so brave what Simone Biles did, because the toll this takes on athletes and dancers is immense for so long, and she still faced it.

There's a stigma about admitting that, that you can't do this, that this is dangerous for you right now.

And I thought it was a really good leap forward.

When I was researching that gymnastics book, this was all the stuff you didn't ever talk about in public.

And to see her do that was wonderful.

Speaking of tolls, there was a toll taken on another character in the book, and this is Charlie, who is the third part of this trio.

He marries Dora at 16.

He is physically broken.

There is a peril that dancers, and truly male dancers face this, and also a stigma.

How did you incorporate all of that?

How important was that to you?

That was very important.

And Charlie was the character I became very attached to, was so moved by.

One of my early inspirations was a documentary, I think it's on Netflix, Wendy Whelan, the great prima ballerina on New York City Ballet.

There's a documentary called "Restless Creature," which is about her forced retirement from the Ballet and then her having to have these surgeries for the injuries to her body and the damage and the toll of it.

And it was sort of harrowing to watch, but also so moving how committed she was to dance again.

And I know sometimes from the outside, it can feel crazy that anybody would put themselves through this and put their body through this and still want to do it more, but that is the artist in all of these athletes or dancers.

I mean, that is part of it.

And I just don't think you can separate it from their extraordinary talent, that drive, that relentlessness, that feeling of only completion, that it's only completed if they're...

They need to be dancing.

And so I was very moved by that.

And I wanted to have a character that had suffered the loss of that, because Charlie was a prodigy and everything seemed to be going that way, but early injuries, he never really was able to take off because of that.

So I wanted to have someone represent that.

My heart really went out to Charlie.

I felt so close to him.

There's another male character in the book, Derek, who, I guess, he's 180 degrees from Charlie.

And this is where the book takes a really dark turn.

So before we talk and we can talk kind of around this, because we don't want to give too much away, but for those people who've read the book, you will understand what I'm going to say, and for those who haven't, you want to read it, you're never gonna be able to hire a contractor after writing this.

Oh, it's so true.

I felt so bad, because now I feel like contractors had it tough enough and now I keep getting emails.

Just today I got an email from someone saying that they had to hire a contractor to repair framing around a window, and they just were afraid to let him in the house.

But yeah, I wanted to have the figure that changes everything for them.

It is this contractor named Derek And I just had thought for so long about how vulnerable on all sides we are in that situation where someone's coming into your home for extended periods of time.

And for the contractor going into someone's home, entering their sphere and how vulnerable it feels and how it is almost like an invasion.

And I think we all know that contractors like plumbers or mechanics, often the lay person doesn't really know how any of it works.

Really, you just had to fly blind to some extent and trust them.

So it felt like the worst thing that could happen for a character like Dara who is so controlled as most dancers are, who lives a life of such discipline, and to have this sort of chaos for us, and this contractor coming in to renovate.

And he's chaotic in his personality as well as his work.

I knew that that would really shake things up for them.

Was he fun to write?

Because here you have on one side the beauty of the ballet and everything is regimented and perfect, and then have this character.

That had to have been fun.

It was.

I mean, I had to cut so much, because it was excessive.

I just was so enjoying him, imagining from his point of view this very verified space, that seems sort of ridiculous to him, and he's this opposite in every way.

So, they always say the antagonists are the most fun to write, and he really was.

I got a kick out of him.

And I always try always with someone that's an antagonist, let's just say, to see everything from their point of view too and to round him out in that way.

So that was really fun to get into his head and imagine how this all looks to him.

Megan, it's always a great story when you have sisters, and when you have twins, it just doubles the fun, because they have their own language and their own way of communicating with each other.

But these two are so different from each other.

And as the story goes on, they are evolving into their own separate characters.

Was that planned or did they evolve as you're writing?

That's really a process question of how you work.

Yeah, and it did happen naturally.

And then I started to realize that and sort of leaned into it, because I had this notion of them being physically different and that they're so close that in some ways they needed to separate in the way that any sort of...

They had never really been out in the world either.

So there's gonna need at some point to be a separation for them to really live full adult lives and how painful that would be and how it would look.

And it felt like it would look like this where it would feel like a betrayal.

I think Dara seeing Marie behaving increasingly differently, doing things that Dara would never do.

That's a loss that feels like a betrayal for her, and it makes her angry and upset.

And then that really made sense to me.

It's kind of like a breakup, but in this case with your family, because they really need to move on and get out in the world and not be so trapped in their family home and the family business.

But that, it would feel like a loss too.

Well, speaking of the family home, the house to me was a character in the book, because they grew up in this house.

Did you have a particular physical house in mind or did this just come out of your imagination?

It came in pieces.

At first, it didn't, then I really started to write more in the house.

And the house became sort of like in a gregarious way.

It was really imagining what it would be like, a place that had just sort of... We all at a certain point go back to maybe we see our childhood bedroom again, or we return if our families remained in the same house.

It's always so strange and everything seems smaller and different than how you remember it.

So thinking about what it would be like to have never left and that time has in some ways stopped in that house.

So that too grew as I wrote and became... Well, yeah, as you say, it did feel like a living breathing thing to me by the end of the book.

It was.

Do you have a favorite character in this book?

Boy, I mean, I have to say I understand Dara very deeply.

I always call her my favorite, 'cause she's sort of difficult.

Certainly the favorite to write was Derek.

I just haven't written anyone like that.

And so I'm sort of attached with him.

It's weird, they're all a little like your children.

If you write them hopefully well or ways that people connect to or respond to, you kind of have to love them all.

But I wouldn't want to be alone in a room with Derek, but I'd maybe have a beer with him at a local tavern.

Megan, this has been such a pleasure.

Thank you.

This story, it's one of secrets and lies and strength and fragility all all in one book.

And yes, it takes us behind the fairytale facade.

It is "The Turnout."

Megan Abbott, you've done it again.

Thank you for being here.

It's a great book.

Thank you so much.

I had such a great time.

I'm Ann Bocock.

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