From the author of the widely acclaimed debut novel Seating Arrangements, winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction: a gorgeously written, fiercely compelling glimpse into the demanding world of professional ballet and its magnetic hold over two generations.
Astonish Me is the irresistible story of Joan, a young American dancer who helps a Soviet … dancer who helps a Soviet ballet star, the great Arslan Rusakov, defect in 1975. A flash of fame and a passionate love affair follow, but Joan knows that, onstage and off, she is destined to remain in the background. She will never possess Arslan, and she will never be a prima ballerina. She will rise no higher than the corps, one dancer among many. After her relationship with Arslan sours, Joan plots to make a new life for herself. She quits ballet, marries a good man, and settles in California with him and their son, Harry. But as the years pass, Joan comes to understand that ballet isn’t finished with her yet, for there is no mistaking that Harry is a prodigy. Through Harry, Joan is pulled back into a world she thought she’d left behind — back into dangerous secrets, and back, inevitably, to Arslan.
Combining a sweeping, operatic plot with subtly observed characters, Maggie Shipstead gives us a novel of stunning intensity and deft psychological nuance. Gripping, dramatic, and brilliantly conjured, Astonish Me confirms Shipstead’s range and ability and raises provocative questions about the nature of talent, the choices we must make in search of fulfillment, and how we square the yearning for comfort with the demands of art.
This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.
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After reading Sari Wilson’s Girl Through Glass for book club, almost everyone recommended that I check out this book next. It’s about ballet, first and foremost, but there’s some Soviet Russia and fun intrigue sprinkled in there, too. I think the family drama and sense of competition rang a little truer in this novel — and it was more interesting …
Finally finished Astonish Me, and adding my name to the growing list of Bubbbers who are Maggie Shipstead fans.
Every ballet story I’ve ever come across has been about painful obsession, forbidden or unrequited love, and sacrifice for beauty/dance. And yet I somehow still enjoy them every time…
I really liked the way the author handled …
I really love books by Maggie Shipstead need her to write a new book ASAP!
Astonish Me is stunningly beautiful — if ballet was a book, this how it would read.
A slow, simmering, melancholic book that is strangely impossible to put down. Many people have said this book is about ballet, and although ballet is as fully present and as fleshed out as the characters themselves, this book is more about what it means to obsess and love, to loose and hurt and wonder, and to constantly strive for something with …
So many different worlds and aspects colliding through happenstance. A more satisfying denouement I could not imagine.
Appealing characters, good information about the world of ballet.
Very talented writer!
A novel about a ballerina who helps a hot male Russian dancer defect, and faces the consequences years later, isn’t my usual cup of tea–but this is wonderful.
This book was upsetting. I was a professional ballet dancer and this book didn’t get it. Plus it was just a regurgitation of Baryshnikov’s defection (maybe it was Nureyev.) In any case the final “surprise” was obvious and I didn’t believe it.