![]() Astonish Me is a gripping, thoughtful and tightly-written novel, where ballet acts as an effective metaphor for all aspirations and disappointments. The aspirations the novel's characters have for their children are also an extension of this theme – your children's successes are your own. Few in her drowsy California suburb know her thrilling history: as a young American ballerina in Paris, she fell into a doomed, passiona. ![]() For years Joan has been trying to forget her past, to find peace and satisfaction in her role as wife and mother. Just as Joan wished she was a dancer with special talent, her neighbour, Sandy, longs for Joan's taut physique, while Jacob is just desperate for Joan to love him more. Buy a used copy of Astonish Me book by Maggie Shipstead. But when, much later, her son, Harry, grows into a dance prodigy, she is pulled back into her old world.Īstonish Me is about the never-ending quest for improvement and perfection – and not just in ballet. When their affair ends painfully, Joan gives up her life of punishing self-control and retreats to the suburbs to have a baby with her childhood suitor, Jacob. ![]() Her new novel, Astonish Me, examines another, rather different world of ritualistic precision and self-discipline – ballet.Joan, a good-but-not-great American ballerina, has a fling with famous Soviet dancer Arslan, and subsequently helps him defect, driving him across the Canadian border to New York in her car boot – a plot line probably inspired by the defection to Canada of the Russian ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1974. ![]() ![]() M aggie Shipstead's first novel, Seating Arrangements, was a social satire set during an exclusive society wedding in New England. ![]()
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