Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead

Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead
Published by Knopf, ISBN 978-0307962904
Hardcover, $25.95, 272 pages

Genre: Literary Fiction
Plot: Joan is a young professional ballerina who meets Aslan, a famous Russian ballet legend and helps him to escape to the United States. After their torrid affair ends, she goes back home, marries her high school boyfriend and they have a son together. Years later, the boy becomes a dancer himself and wishes to meet the famous dancer his mother once knew.

My Review: In Maggie Shipstead's first novel, Seating Arrangements, she managed to brilliantly capture the voice of a middle-aged man contemplating an affair during the weekend of his daughter's wedding. I was so impressed with Shipstead's beautifully crafted sentences, it was like she spent hours making each one perfect.

In Astonish Me, Shipstead once again drops us into a world we don't know. We feel what it's like to be a part of a ballet company, the competition, the discipline and way one must give oneself completely over to become a dancer worthy of being part of a ballet company. Like athletes, at some point everyone must come to the realization that they are no longer good enough to go to the next level.

The novel moves back and forth in time, and we see Joan as a young dancer and then as a wife, mother and teacher. Joan's husband has loved her forever, but sometimes he feels she doesn't love him or their life as much. He says to Joan:

"Most of the time now you're here with me- really here, invested; it's not like it was at first- and I think, she's letting me know her, really know her the way people do when they're married. And at other times you're so distant it's like someone's swapped you out for a forgery. You seem like you're going through the motions."

One of the most interesting characters in the novel is Elaine, Joan's friend from the dance company. She is a better dancer than Joan, and has a long-time relationship with the dancer who founded their company. Shipstead could have another entire novel from Elaine's point-of-view.

Astonish Me is another brava performance from Shipstead. Joan is a fascinating protagonist, so complicated and although she is so closed up, Shipstead lets us see inside to who she really is. Fans of ballet will definitely like this insider's look.

rating 5 of 5 stars

Some Great Summer Beach Reads

Every year I devote my June Book Report column in the Citizen to summer beach reads. Here is this year's edition.
 Reprinted from auburnpub.com.

June has arrived and that means it’s time to plan our summer beach reads. Whether you read on vacation, by the pool, or on your front porch, here are some suggestions for great summer reads.

If you are looking for a traditional juicy summer novel, Stephanie Evanovich follows up last year’s big beach read “Big Girl Panties”, with a sassy, sexy prequel “The Sweet Spot” about a Derek Jeter-like baseball star who pursues a restaurateur wary of his reputation. It’s perfect for the baseball lover, and it publishes July 8th. 

The Sweet Spot

South Carolina native Dorothea Benton Frank returns with another Southern family novel about a four women: 80 year-old feisty Maisie, her middle-aged daughter Liz, Liz’s artist daughter Ashley and Ashley’s roommate Mary Beth, all trying to come to grips what life has in store for them- oh yeah, and there is a hurricane heading their way. I love the humor and humanity in Frank’s novels. 

The Hurricane Sisters

If you like your summer reading to have a little more meat, Patry Francis’ 500 page “The Orphans of Race Point” takes place over thirty years in the lives of three friends who grew up together on Cape Cod. It’s a big, wonderful story with heartbreak, love, and family- those who are related by blood and those you choose to be your family. This is my favorite book so far this year. 

The Orphans of Race Point

Another big book is Greg Iles’ “Natchez Burning”, the first in a trilogy. This one tells the story of a son out to save his father, a beloved doctor accused of murdering an African-American nurse he worked with years ago. This one has been getting rave reviews, including one from Stephen King. 

Natchez Burning

Those of you who were addicted to HBO’s “True Detective” should check out Laura McHugh’s “The Weight of Blood”. When a teenage girl is found brutally murdered and left under a tree, her friend tries to find out what happened, and wonders if it could be tied to her mother’s disappearance when she was a just a baby. The story is told from the mother’s perspective and the daughter’s perspective, and has lots of scary, creepy atmosphere.  

The Weight of Blood

If historical fiction is your pleasure, Jacqueline Winspear, author of the WWI private investigator Maisie Dobbs series, checks in with a stand alone WWI novel, “The Care and Management of Lies” about Tom, a farmer in England, his sister who protests for peace, and his wife, a teacher-turned-farmer’s wife who must keep the farm going when Tom goes to war in France. I loved the look at what being a farmer’s wife at that time entailed. 

The Care and Mangement of Lies

If the Civil War interests you, Jennifer Chiaverini’s “The Spy Mistress” fictionalizes the true story of Richmond, Virginia aristocrat Elizabeth Van Lew who spied for the Union, putting herself and her family at great personal risk to help Lincoln’s generals win the war. It was a story I didn’t know and found so interesting. 

The Spy Mistress

Maggie Shipstead’s second novel, “Astonish Me” is very different from her first novel, “Seating Arrangements”, but just as good. Joan studies to be a ballerina and becomes involved with a Russian dancer who defects to the US in the 1970s. She marries a childhood friend, has a son, and moves to California. Her son becomes a ballet dancer and his idol is the Russian whom Joan was in love with years ago. The writing is gorgeous and if you love ballet, this insider’s look is fascinating.

Astonish Me

For non-fiction readers, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner follow-up their hugely successful book “Freakanomics” with “Think Like A Freak”. They combine terrific storytelling with their unique analysis to help people be more creative and productive. They show us how a hot dog eating champion came upon his winning strategy (it involves soaking the bun in water), why an Australian doctor ingested dangerous bacteria, and why e-mail scammers say they are from Nigeria. If you didn’t get Dad a Father’s Day gift yet (and if you didn’t, shame on you!), go get this. 

Think Like A Freak

Everyone is talking about Hillary Clinton’s book, “Hard Choices”, which published this week. She talks about the difficult decisions she has faced in her life and how she came to them. It covers much of her time as Secretary of State in the Obama administration and people will no doubt be parsing the sentences for clues as to whether she will run for president in 2016.

Hard Choices

Whatever you read this summer, I hope you enjoy it and that the weather is good wherever you go.

Book Report: Shipstead's debut a promising character study

My review of Maggie Shipstead's Seating Arrangements  from the Citizen website
Shipstead's debut a promising character study : Diane Larue

Maggie Shipstead & J. Courtney Sullivan in Conversation

Maggie Shipstead & J. Courtney Sullivan

Shipstead poses with her novel

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending a fascinating conversation between J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Maine and Maggie Shipstead, author of Seating Arrangements at Barnes & Noble on the Upper East Side in Manhattan.

Sullivan began, reading from her novel about four women from one family who meet up at the family summer home in Maine. She read the scene where young, unmarried and pregnant Maggie arrives with her friend instead of her boyfriend, much to the consternation of her grandmother.

Shipstead read from chapter two of her book, where her protagonist, middle-aged Winn, remembers how his daughter Daphne, who is pregnant and getting married this weekend, wanted him to tell her she was  "his princess" when she was a young child. He was truly unable to understand his daughter.

I read the first two chapters of Seating Arrangements while waiting, and I was struck by how well-crafted her sentences were. I asked her if she did extensive rewrites to get that, but they just come to her that way.

There are some fantastic WASP-y names in her novel (Biddy, Greyson, Sterling) set on an island off Cape Cod, and Shipstead said she got them from a trophy room in a Rhode Island resort. They were on lawn bowling trophies from the 1950s.

There was discussion about a topic that has come up recently- unlikable characters. Maine has Alice, the matriarch of the family who has no qualms about saying whatever she is thinking, no matter whom it hurts. Sullivan was slightly taken aback by the many comments from reviewers and readers who didn't like Alice. I did wonder though if older women identified with Alice or if they disliked her as well.

She has great affection for Ann Marie, the dutiful daughter-in-law in the novel. I have to agree, I liked Ann Marie best, her journey in the novel was moving, and I think many people would identify with her.

Winn in Seating Arrangements is also a somewhat unlikeable character. Sullivan mentioned that Washington Post book reviewer Ron Charles wrote that he loved Winn, which brought a chuckle from the crowd. Shipstead said that Winn "obeys a set or rules that he came up with and follows them."

I don't dislike it when there are unlikable characters in a novel; to me, it is better to be unlikable than boring. If I'm reading a book and the characters are just plain uninteresting, I lose interest in the book. But give me a complicated, flawed character who is interesting, and I'm buying into the novel.   I mean, Walter White from TV's Breaking Bad and Don Draper from Mad Men are not nice guys, but you can't take your eyes off them when they are on screen.

Sullivan also gave a shout-out to author Maile Meloy, who wrote two brilliant books I read a few years ago, Liars & Saints and A Family Daughter, and I almost jumped out of my seat when she mentioned her, thereby making my geekiness official. I loved those books and I was so excited to hear Sullivan give Meloy props.

Maine is now in paperback, and my review of Seating Arrangements will be in the Citizen and online at auburnpub.com on August 12th. I'll post the link when it is live.