The Ballerinas ⭑⭑⭑
Genre: Fiction
US Publication: December 7, 2021
Print: 304 pages
Audio: 13 hours 21 minutes
Confetti Rating: 3 stars
REVIEW:
Imagine a ballerina tightly twirling with an unbound copy of a book pressed to her chest, with so much poise and promise, only to stumble and fling the loose pages all over the stage. She gathers most of them up in random order, does an arabesque, and hands the reshuffled, incomplete story over to you to read.
That story is The Ballerinas, Rachel Kapelke-Dale’s debut novel about three friends who meet while studying at the Paris Opera Ballet in the late 1990s. The book takes readers in leaps and backwards bounds to various years between then and 2019 as one of them, Delphine, tries to atone for a past wrong by choreographing a ballet herself.
The world Kapelke-Dale creates is an interesting one that will (obviously) appeal most to people who love ballet. While I do not, I still found the glimpse into the lifestyle of professional ballerinas fascinating. However, the choppy, over-stuffed story just didn’t work for me. Somehow in a mere 304 pages she manages to cram in: mean girl tropes, statutory rape, feminism, cancer (twice), infertility, abortion, adultery, and murder. If the novel were a ballet, it should be called “L’evier de la Cuisine” (“The Kitchen Sink”).
When considering how to shelve The Ballerinas, it seems most apt to blandly call it “fiction.” The suspense isn’t that suspenseful, and the mystery isn’t very mysterious. Because the characters go from teenagers to women in their 30s, it’s also not necessarily YA, new adult, contemporary, or women’s fiction. The audiobook does help mature the characters though given the adult voice of the single narrator (Ell Potter).
I’m rooting for this author’s growth and will be curious to see what she writes next. Should it be a novel with a linear narrative and a more focused plot, she just might find me in her audience. But I’ll leave any further efforts like The Ballerinas to the ballerinas.
My thanks to St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan Audio for the advance review copies. The Ballerinas is slated for US publication on December 7, 2021.
PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:
Dare Me meets Black Swan and Luckiest Girl Alive in a captivating, voice-driven debut novel about a trio of ballerinas who meet as students at the Paris Opera Ballet School.
Fourteen years ago, Delphine abandoned her prestigious soloist spot at the Paris Opera Ballet for a new life in St. Petersburg - taking with her a secret that could upend the lives of her best friends, fellow dancers Lindsay and Margaux. Now 36 years old, Delphine has returned to her former home and to the legendary Palais Garnier Opera House, to choreograph the ballet that will kickstart the next phase of her career - and, she hopes, finally make things right with her former friends. But Delphine quickly discovers that things have changed while she's been away... and some secrets can't stay buried forever.
Moving between the trio's adolescent years and the present day, The Ballerinas explores the complexities of female friendship, the dark drive towards physical perfection in the name of artistic expression, the double-edged sword of ambition and passion, and the sublimated rage that so many women hold inside - all culminating in a twist you won't see coming, with magnetic characters you won't soon forget.