Astonish Me, published in 2014, is an intensely beautiful novel that centers around the ballet world of 1970’s New York City. The title caught my eye while reading a Shelf Awareness article about ballet-adjacent books, and having read and loved Maggie Shipstead’s recent bestseller Great Circle, I knew I had to find a copy. Astonish Me follows the protagonist Joan from a suburban childhood to a tumultuous ballet career to life as a mother and ballet teacher in Southern California. Early in her career, Joan’s life becomes inextricably tied to famous dancer Arslan Rusakov, whom she helps defect from Soviet Russia (you might recognize characters that seem mighty similar to Mikhail Baryshnikov, George Balanchine, Natalia Makarova, and others). Although she retires from the stage and her affair with Rusakov feeling defeated, Joan finds herself being pulled back into the world she left behind when her son begins his own career as a dancer.

I was continually surprised in all the best ways while reading Astonish Me. I knew from the back cover blurb that I would love the setting and subject matter, but I had no idea how engrossed I would become with the characters. Shipstead develops Joan and the others with such care and detail that, though they are all far from perfect, you can’t help but care about them too. I was also surprised by the sheer amount of research that must have gone into this book. As a dancer myself, I’m used to cringing when writers refer to pointe shoes as “toe shoes” or throw in perfunctory references to arabesques and pirouettes. Shipstead not only uses the correct terms for every movement (in one passage she describes nearly an entire ballet variation, move for move, in exquisite detail), but she understands the feeling of the barre, the theater, the empty rehearsal space. And lastly, I was surprised by the plot itself. Shipstead is the master of jaw-dropping, didn’t-see-that-coming endings. She calmly guides you through an entire book, focusing more on character development than on plot, so that you’re almost lulled into expecting a subtle ending. When she drops a bomb instead, it’s pretty astonishing. I loved this captivating, melancholic, revelatory novel, and I think you will too.

I’d recommend this novel to…

• Anyone looking for a taste of bittersweet literary fiction… it’s similar in tone to Sally Rooney’sBeautiful World, Where Are You
• Anyone who loves the visceral imagery of a sports memoir… it’s similar in theme to Andre Agassi’sOpen
• Anyone who appreciates an author who expertly writes about relationships between family members, friends, lovers… it’s similar in style to Meg Wolitzer’s The Female Persuasion