Selected Product:
| First Love
Hardcover
Author: Adrienne Sharp
Release Date: July 2005
ISBN-10: B000ELJ3T4
Average Customer Rating:
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Winter Season: A Dancer's Journal
ISBN-10: 0813027055
ISBN-13: 0667272270557
List Price:$21.95
Winter Season: A Dancer's Journal, with a new preface
ISBN-10: 0813027055
ISBN-13: 9780813027050
List Price:$21.95
In Balanchine's Company: A Dancer's Memoir
ISBN-10: 0819568074
ISBN-13: 9780819568076
List Price:$24.95
White Swan, Black Swan (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
ISBN-10: 034543868X
ISBN-13: 9780345438683
List Price:$13.95
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Adam and Sandra are ballet dancers, friends since they were fifteen, and now lovers. Sandra is a dancer in the corps of the New York City Ballet who has just caught George Balanchine's eye. Adam is an explosively gifted new star who has defected to the rival company, the American Ballet Theatre. They are in love, passionate and ambitious, but ill-prepared to handle the demands, seductions, and expectations that are visited on them as they come within reach of their dreams.
The novel proceeds from a true premise: Since the beginning of his career, Balanchine sought to create an opulent ballet from the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty, but never had the means and the muse come together at the same time. In First Love, Adrienne Sharp conjures in Sandra a last muse for the ailing ballet master. Balanchine promises to make Sleeping Beauty for her, and that it will be his final and greatest ballet. But Balanchine's favor comes at a price, and Sandra is forced to decide which of her loves comes first. Should she continue her tumultuous involvement with the first boy to capture her heart and succumb to his vision of their future? Or should she accept all that Balanchine offers-the fulfillment of a dream nurtured from childhood during endless hours at the barre?
A former ballet dancer herself, Adrienne Sharp's first book was the acclaimed short-story collection White Swan, Black Swan. Sharp's debut novel features the same marvelous storytelling as it revisits the vivid and rarefied world of dancers, and the sacrifices and hard bargains they make in pursuit of beauty, grace, and consummate passion.
Only fit for Hustler magazine
| Customer Rating: | | What a disappointment. Nothing but cursing, unlikable, manic-depressive characters, the crudest possible language and ugly sex scenes...if it weren't for the few segments on Balanchine this book would have gone into the trash much sooner - but the 'author' has taken quite a bit of literary license with him beyond what she admits to (for example, Suzanne Farrell never visited Balanchine in the hospital when he was dying)...anyway, if you are looking for a story about love and the ballet, I recommend passing this horrid thing up and not wasting your money. |
A Ballet Through Words
| Customer Rating: | The one word to describe this book is: excruciating; it clutches your imagination with its tenderness, beauty, pain and devastation. I won't give another plot overview; Dawn has already given a great one.
This story is the perfect translation of a ballet into a novel. It has multiple layers and tissues. The reader is shown from afar the glittering beauty of the lives of ballerinas and their passion for their art, then is taken in closer to show the reality, the pain and the dirty secrets of those lives backstage. But it's not all drama and angst. As with all great passions, there are the breathtaking highs as well as the crushing lows.
Besides getting a stunning story, the reader is also treated to the world of ballet from the inside which, as someone who will never dance, I found fascinating. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. |
Read this book!!
| Customer Rating: | | Compelling...I stayed up until 4 am reading it just becaues I wanted to see how it ended. Not to give anything away, but the ending is a bit disappointing. The other reviews are valid, in that there is more familial drama than ballet, but the writing was so brilliant that I wanted more when I put it down. A good choice if you are passionate about dance. |
Excellent debut novel !!!
| Customer Rating: | I love this book. It is one of my favorite contemporary novels, and I think it is an excellent debut novel from Adrienne Sharp. Her collection of stories in White Swan, Black Swan have a similar formula to The Sleeping Beauty, but the novel takes a deeper look at trials and tribulations of two budding dancers, and the decisions they face as they must decide between love and a career. The result is a very satisfying read.
I'm not going to give away the whole plot, but the two main characters face difficult personal decisions while trying to maintain a career in the seemingly brutalizing world of ballet. Adam engages in several short sexual relationships, while Sandra remains to herself, as if she is waiting for her "first love," Adam. They eventually end up consummating their relationship, but from then on, as their relationship grows, they must decide what their true desires are--specifically Sandra, who Balanchine chooses as his "last muse" for his adaptation of Sleeping Beauty.
Eventually, however, all forces collide by the end of the novel. Love, lust, career, aspirations, and heartbreak make up the climax of the novel. Sharp combines the elements of dance with the wrenching emotions of the art, much like what was done in White Swan, Black Swan. The ending makes complete sense--and leads the reader to make their own conclusions about the characters.
Despite what other reviews say, I do recommend this novel. It offers an emotional look at the lives of dancers, and the impact the art of ballet can have on their lives. The characters are complex, the plot is well executed, and the book is written in delicate prose--overall, this novel is "compulsively readable" and an achievement for Adrienne Sharp.
5/5 |
Literary Masterpiece
| Customer Rating: | | I have read this author's book of short stories as well as her novel. This book is a most ingenious interpretation of the original Sleeping Beauty. It is the modern day story of the tragic fairy tale. How brilliant is that? Her interweaving of the complex story with the lives of these dancers, Balanchine and the fairy tale are extraordinary. You should buy this book annd her short stories, too, to follow the career of this gifted writer. If you are looking for a True Love romance novel, you will soon realize that you are reading something far far greater and important than any trivial romance book you were going for. This book is for the bright and literary who understand the book's brilliant design. |
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