Review by Booklist Review
What do people owe a repressive government that originally nurtured them? Durham offers an attention-grabbing debut novel about the closeness and rivalry between twin sisters in Cold War Russia as they navigate their individual ambitions alongside the pressures of the Soviet state. Orphaned as newborns during the Siege of Leningrad, thoughtful Maya and the more dynamic Natasha grow up with their fellow students at the Vaganova Ballet Academy, undergoing rigorous training and hoping for a career with the prestigious Kirov Ballet. However, per a new Kremlin law, only one of them can join the company, which spurs intense competition and the first of several high-stakes plot twists. The insider view of the dancer's life is enthralling, and even non-balletomanes will be pulled along by the women's stories, which include an international tour, love affairs, choreography, and acting. The omniscient perspective creates a truly cinematic experience as it swoops among the sisters and many fictional and historical characters, including filmmaker Sergei Bondarchuk and even Khrushchev, in this riveting tale about sisterhood and the purpose of art.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Twin Soviet ballerinas, born and orphaned on a single day in 1941, wreak havoc on each other's lives. It's often said that love and hate are not opposites but closely related states, divided only by the proverbial thin line. Durham's debut explores that idea through an operatic melodrama of a plot, boldly layered over a scaffolding of historical fact. In the opening scene, with the Siege of Leningrad in the offing, a 19-year-old dancer with no partner and no family goes through the throes of labor in a drab communal apartment. An hour later, a friend named Katusha arrives to find two infants wailing between the feet of a corpse. She grabs the girls, names them Maya and Natasha, and jumps on the last train to Tashkent to wait out the war. Fast forward 17 years: The girls are about to graduate from the feeder academy for the prestigious Kirov ballet when big news arrives. The Kirov plans to bring on a few new dancers ahead of an upcoming European tour, but to (hopefully) prevent defection, only one member of a family can join. Everyone knows it will be Natasha, the more gifted and popular sister--and no one can possibly imagine what's ahead in this novel's tornado of a plot. Durham provides an author's note confirming the truth of the historical detail underlying the drama. Exchange visits of Russian and American ballet companies were indeed underway when the Cuban missile crisis broke; nearly all the details and characters involved here in the filming of the epic Soviet version ofWar and Peace come from life. Durham's storytelling bravado is buttressed by impressive proclamations: "Only three things can be depended on in this world: that hemlines will rise and fall, that regimes will come and go, and that people will never change. This is why the Russians went on doing many of the same things under Brezhnev that they had under Khrushchev, which they'd also done under Stalin, which were the same things people everywhere have always done, no matter who exploited them: getting toothaches and falling in love, scolding their children and singing in taverns...writing terrible poetry and believing, even though they knew better, that some sort of brilliant fate awaited them." Totalitarianism really can bring out the worst in people, suggests this eye-catching debut. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
