nomadreader

The backstory: Last year, I read Maggie Shipstead's second novel, Astonish Me . I enjoyed it so much, I wanted to read her debut novel, Seating Arrangements,  too. Seating Arrangements  won the 2012 Dylan Thomas Prize  and was shortlisted for the 2012 Flaherty-Dunnan Prize . The basics: Set over one wedding weekend at their New England island house, Seating Arrangements is the story of the Van Meter family. Patriarch Winn is obsessed with joining a prestigious club on the island, his wife Biddy has planned the wedding with immense detail, his daughter Daphne is getting married while very pregnant, and his daughter Livia is still reeling from the break-up with her boyfriend Teddy, the son of Winn's college girlfriend and current nemesis. My thoughts: When I read Astonish Me , I called Shipstead's prose "astonishingly good" and having "so much interior insight." I can easily say the same about Seating Arrangements . In the early pages, this descripti...

The basics: Stretching from the 1970's to the early 2000's, Astonish Me  is the story of Joan, a young ballerina good enough to make the corps but not good enough to ever be a star. Joan's story is told in chapters and vignettes that move back and forth in time. My thoughts: As someone who has little coordination and even less grace, my fascination with ballet and dance truly stems from appreciation. Maggie Shipstead clearly shares my fascination with ballet, and the characters in this novel are at times both reverent and critical about ballet. These complicated feelings about ballet extend into the characters' lives too, and Shipstead's prose is astonishingly good. For so much interior insight, there is also a lot of action. Joan is at the center of this novel, but the secondary characters are actually more intriguing. From Joan's roommate and fellow dancer Elaine, to Russian defector Arslan Rusakov, to Joan's husband and son, as well as her neighbor...