BALLET BOOKS, YOU GUYS.
Have I told you before how I will read any book set in the world of ballet? Even if everyone says it’s idiotic? This is partly because I love ballet books, and partly because, for reasons passing (my) understanding, there just aren’t that many ballet books out there.
Yet my forays into the Alex Awards continue to yield glorious dividends, for a past Alex Award winner was Meg Howrey’s The Cranes Dance, a book about the older of two sisters who dance in a prestigious New York company. Or rather, the only of two sisters who presently dance in the company — Kate’s younger sister, Gwen, has gone back home to Michigan after what — in retrospect — was the long and heavily telegraphed lead-up to a psychotic break. Recently split from her boyfriend, and struggling to keep her head above water professionally, Kate tries to understand her part in what happened to Gwen.
Meg Howrey, the author of The Cranes Dance, is herself a ballet dancer, which is a double-edged sword. The good edge of having a ballet dancer write about ballet is that s/he will know the world inside and out. The bad edge of the sword is that professional ballet dancers are not, by and large, professional writers. This was the issue I had with Sophie Flack’s Bunheads a few years ago, and in the early parts of The Cranes Dance, I worried that it would suffer from the same problem. Kate is prone to using capital letters at time, which — and I except J.K. Rowling from this, although I think we all wish she had knocked that off, particularly in Order of the Phoenix — is not completely the mark of a protagonist whose inner monologues have been crafted by a seasoned writer.
(I know, I know. Issue your accusations of snobbery in the comments below, and I will meekly agree to them.)
HOWEVER. (See that? Things are working out okay!) I ultimately concluded that The Cranes Dance sits at a very sweet spot for me, which is, middlebrow stuff that is better than it needs to be. (See also the first season of Orphan Black, almost the entire run of The Good Wife, and the film adaptations of the Hunger Games books.) There are no pat resolutions here, nor — despite what I have to feel would be major temptation — beating to death of symbolical horses. Howrey juxtaposes moments from Kate’s professional life with moments from her personal life, particularly her past with Gwen, but neither Howrey nor Kate belabors the parallels between the two.
Meantime, Howrey includes plenty of the kind of sausage-making details you want from a book about ballet. Gwen is mentally ill, but her illness is not easily categorized or mended, nor does Howrey need it to reveal something fundamental about her character. Kate and Gwen have been imperfect sisters to each other, but nobody is at fault, or rather, they are both at fault equally and in ways that are about carelessness, not about betrayal (such it often is! with siblings!). So all in all, an excellent read.
P.S. I am so excited for that Starz show about ballerinas. I can’t remember its real name, because my friend dubbed it Sad Bunheads and that’s all I can call it forever.
Do you like ballet books? Are there particular types of books, or particular book settings, that you feel deserve to get more play in the landscape of contemporary literature? Cause I legitimately find it baffling there aren’t more books about ballet dancers.