Astonish Me

Even more than she did in her vastly entertaining debut, SEATING ARRANGEMENTS, Maggie Shipstead soars with this exhilarating audiobook A world-famous Soviet dancer defects to the West. The American ballerina who helped him escape gives up the stage to marry and have a family. Themes of talent, ambition, passion, and secrets are set up and repeated with variations over 30 years. To perform this intricately constructed story, narrator Rebecca Lowman must seamlessly voice boy, then woman, then girl; Russian speakers, French speakers, old and young. She's fluid and transparent in a gripping performance of a tale about performance, even subtly aging the voices of characters we meet as children and follow into adulthood. A sensational piece of acting and a flawless production. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

February 3, 2014
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Shipstead’s prose moves fluidly through settings as varied as a ballet rehearsal and a suburban backyard, and her characterizations are full. The story proceeds with a quiet insistence that is matched by the inevitability of its denouement. Agent: Rebecca Gradinger, Fletcher & Co.