If You Love Ballet, Read These Books

A Choreography Bibliography

Back in 2014, I got a little bit obsessed with books about ballet. I love the gritty determination of dancers to follow their dreams against all the odds. I find driven people with a singular focus and a passionate determination compelling, along with the way it brings out both the best and the worst in them as they seek achievement at any cost. The relationships that are often lost or irreparably damaged in the midst of fierce competition. The bittersweet taste of victory in the light of all of that. The contrast of sometimes ugly rivalry with the beauty of the art.

I came late to ballet, as I have to many things. I don’t have heart-warming stories of my mother taking me to the Nutcracker every year, or anything more than the fuzziest of memories of my few lessons as a five-year-old. In spring 2014, though, I picked up Maggie Shipstead’s Astonish Me at a book signing. I hadn’t read her first novel, Seating Arrangements, but I’d heard great things about it, and I was thirsty to learn as much as I could from good writers, especially women. It was the start, or something like the start, of my obsession with ballet.

Astonish Me turned out to be my favourite read of that year. The writing is lovely and the structure is rich and complex in a way that adds to the book. It is packed with things I like to read about: doomed love, the Cold War, characters of my exact vintage.

Bookshop US | Libro.fm | Amazon

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A few months after reading Astonish Me, I was browsing Goodreads when a review from one of my MFA classmates caught my eye: “From the first chapter’s analysis of Swan Lake to the final moments, I was hooked,” she wrote. “Great look into ballet, mental illness, and sisterhood”.

I had never heard of the novel in question, Meg Howrey’s The Cranes Dance, but this particular friend had a similar aesthetic to mine, and I trusted her judgement. I bought it, and it sort of changed my life. The acerbic voice of the ballerina narrator hooked me, too, but the novel also taught me about adult drop-in ballet classes — and despite not having the “right” body type, or the talent, or the hand-eye coordination, I then spent a summer regularly taking these classes.

Bookshop US | Blackwell’s | Libro.fm

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Tiny Pretty Things is a YA novel by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton about mean girls at an élite ballet school, all vying to be the best. There’s backstabbing and manipulation, gossip and bullying — it’s a wild ride and I couldn’t put it down. Who decided that books about teenagers should only be read by teenagers? This was the only book that was able to hold my attention during my Great Summer Reading Slump of 2015, and I’ve been recommending it ever since.

Bookshop US | Bookshop UK | Libro.fm | Amazon

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Bookshop US | Bookshop UK | Blackwell’s | Libro.fm

Around the same time, I was also captivated by another YA novel about élite ballerinas: Nova Ren Suma’s The Walls Around Us. It was the dance that drew me – it’s a much darker read than my usual fare – though there is really more about murder and ghosts and prison than ballet itself. It’s more than ten years since I read it, and I still think about it often. The writing is beautiful — if you love literary fiction as well as YA, this is definitely one to pick up.

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Want more ballet-themed books? More of them can be found here (US) and here (UK).

Feedback is welcome on the format of this newsletter, and please feel free to comment with the thing you love, so I can recommend relevant books for you!

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