"Underappreciated Genius" Gary likes to stoutly announce that he "aced an IQ test" when he was a kid, and Sandy begrudges Joan her thinness and easy grace, pushing food on her like "she's planning to turn her into foie gras." The ordinary unhappinesses of Gary and Sandy counterbalance the epic arc of Joan's life, and showcase Shipstead's immense talent for observation. Luckily, two marginal characters, Joan's unlovely neighbors Sandy and Gary Wheelock, make the novel infinitely richer with their ordinariness. Joan's frailty and elegance and Arslan's magnetism make everything that happens to them seem poignant, like part of a ballet. But when her son Harry's talent for dance becomes clear, Joan is thrust back unwillingly into Arslan's life. When he throws her over, the pregnant Joan marries safe and sweet Jacob, her childhood friend, and moves to California. Seeing his fearless dancing "harrows her." She helps him defect, driving the getaway car and then hiding out from the paparazzi with him in a Manhattan apartment. Joan is a ballerina straining for perfection and falling short when she meets the famous Soviet dancer Arslan Rusakov. It is full of the kind of prose you want to curl up and nest in like a cat: seamless and full of small elegances. Maggie Shipstead's book of the same name does not astonish rather, it charms. "Etonnez-moi," Sergei Diaghilev, the founder of the Ballets Russes, used to say to his dancers. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Astonish Me Author Maggie Shipstead
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