An Artist’s Discipline: On ‘They’re Going to Love You’

Before she became a novelist, Meg Howrey was a ballerina. She danced professionally with the storied Joffrey II Company and performed with several other ballet companies, as well as in various theater productions. It’s no surprise, then, that her fourth and most recent novel, They’re Going to Love You, is her second work of fiction set in the ballet world.

In Howrey’s 2012 novel , her sister protagonists live and perform in the injury-laden, drug-fueled, and precarious world of working ballerinas. The sisters, who are young adults, have never known any other life. , on the other hand, is narrated in the first-person by Carlisle, a choreographer in her forties who finds herself estranged from her dying father and his partner James, both of whom spent their lives dancing. Dancers and choreographers work hand