Astonish Me - Softcover

MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007525370 ISBN 13: 9780007525379

Publisher: ONE STORY, 2014

Synopsis

Pub Date: 2014-04-10 Pages: 368 Language: English Publisher: Harper Collins UK From the award-winning. bestselling author of Seating Arrangements. comes a novel of astonishing beauty Joan Joyce is a professional ballet dancer who has always believed that she is destined for a life in the shadows. When her love affair with Russian supremo Arslan Rusakov ended. she ran back into the arms of childhood sweetheart. Jacob Bintz. Now pregnant. Joan is fated to leave New York. the corps and the cries of .. Astonish Me behind Under the hazy Californian sun. Joan is unaware of the fascination she invites from others She lacks the abundant sexuality of neighbour. Sandy;. the cocksure nature of Sandys husband and the intellect and dependable nature of Jacob To her mind. all she can offer is ballet. To occupy her days. she opens a small dance studio. Her son Harry demonstrates a natural ...

About this title

Review:

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, April 2014: “Etonnez-moi (astonish me)!”--was the great ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev’s command to his collaborators and dancers, and it’s just what this insistent, subtle novel did to me. A confession: I may have been the only reviewer who was not blown away by Maggie Shipstead's best-selling debut, Seating Arrangements. So this sophisticated, intelligent novel was an astonishing discovery. On one level, it tells a straightforward story, of a young woman in the 1970s who fought her way into the professional ballet world, helped her Russian dancer/sort-of boyfriend defect, and then left the ballet, married a “civilian” and raised a son who turned out to be ballet-obsessed. But it’s also an insistent and deft look at passion and art, a book about growing up and facing your limits and getting on with life. That it’s set in the dance world--an irresistible venue even for those of us who performed neither toe nor tap--is just the bonus to a novel that already hit the jackpot. --Sara Nelson

About the Author:

Maggie Shipstead graduated from Harvard in 2005 and earned an M.F.A at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She was also a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Her debut novel, Seating Arrangements, won the Dylan Thomas Prize and the LA Times Prize for First Fiction. Astonish Me is her second novel.

About this edition

• Publisher: ONE STORY
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0007525370
• ISBN 13: 9780007525379
• Binding: Paperback