After a love affair with a world-famous Soviet ballet star altered the course of her own dance career forever, she hoped to start over in a new place with her new family - but, unfortunately, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The story proceeds with a quiet insistence that is matched by the inevitability of its denouement. Astonish Me Part of the Book Club Joan just wanted to move on, but her past has come calling. Shipstead’s prose moves fluidly through settings as varied as a ballet rehearsal and a suburban backyard, and her characterizations are full. Their meeting leads to the creation of a ballet that will unite Arslan, Harry, and Harry’s girlfriend, Chloe, who is also a dancer, but that threatens to leave Jacob estranged from his son. Knopf, 25.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-4 Shipstead’s second novel (after Seating Arrangements ), set mostly in California and New York in the 1970s, ’80s. Their son, Harry, reveals a gift for and a love of ballet, and his talent is such that eventually he comes in contact with Arslan. But Joan marries Jacob, a childhood friend, and moves to suburban Southern California, abandoning her glamorous life of concerts and parties in New York City. Early in her professional career, she had helped Arslan Rusakov, a famed Russian ballet dancer, defect to the West while his troupe was performing in Toronto, after which the two had an affair. Shipstead’s second novel (after Seating Arrangements), set mostly in California and New York in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, concerns Joan Joyce, a ballerina who abandons the dance world when she becomes pregnant.
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