Though it spans three decades, “Astonish Me” is a strikingly svelte book, composed of short, intense scenes that move back and forth in time and around the world. Something of a ballet’s structure is reflected in these pages. If you live in that brutal, beautiful world - or especially if you still long for it - this is a novel you must read. “You can’t be weak in the ballet,” Shipstead writes, “or it’ll crush you.” In pursuit of the perfect line, extension and turnout, they sacrifice their own bones. The genetically blessed ones must worship unrelenting precision. Despite their mothers’ cooing, little girls in tutus learn early that their hips are too wide, their thighs too fat, their tolerance for pain too low. The world of ballet, after all, is not a particularly funny one. So it takes a few measures to realize that her second novel, “Astonish Me,” performs a dramatic changement. Her take on a sniping corps of cutthroat ballerinas could be another bravura comedy.
Shipstead can be fantastically witty about the anxieties and humiliations of middle age. I’ve been looking forward to it since I read her debut, “Seating Arrangements.” That button-down satire of the Martha’s Vineyard set was the smartest romantic comedy of 2012.
Filled with intrigue, brilliant satire, and emotional nuance, "Astonish Me" is a superlative follow-up to Shipstead's superb debut.Īs the son of a retired dance teacher and the husband of a former dancer and the father of a current dancer, I felt the beat of Maggie Shipstead’s new ballet novel even before the curtain rose. In graceful, inimitable prose, Shipstead draws us into an extraordinary world, and the lives of her vivid and tempestuous characters. But when Harry's success brings him into close contact with Arslan, explosive secrets are revealed that shatter the delicate balance Joan has struck between her past and present. As the years pass, Joan settles into her new life in California, teaching dance and watching her son, Harry, become a ballet prodigy himself. While Arslan's career takes off in New York, Joan's slowly declines, ending when she becomes pregnant and decides to marry her longtime admirer, a PhD student named Jacob. "Astonish Me" is the irresistible story of Joan, a ballerina whose life has been shaped by her relationship with the world-famous dancer Arslan Ruskov, whom she helps defect from the Soviet Union to the United States. From the author of the widely acclaimed debut novel "Seating Arrangements," winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize: a gorgeously written, fiercely compelling glimpse into the passionate, political world of professional ballet and its magnetic hold over two generations.
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