Reviews tagging 'Infidelity'

The Ballerinas by Rachel Kapelke-Dale

10 reviews

emdohco's review

dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Infertility, Abortion, and Infidelity

jcinf's review

challenging dark hopeful reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book was everything I didn’t know I needed. 

• Friendship between women
• The secrets we keep
• The relentless and exhausting pursuit of perfection (one that I’d argue is an experience profoundly belonging to women)
• The feeling of being watched that all women live with

This book ended up healing me in ways I didn’t expect. Here are some of my favorite quotes. Huge spoilers in the last couple: 

We all stuck to our stories. And it is so easy to see someone through only one own lens: the role they play in yours. Stella had been right. I’d only ever seen her as a guru, a mentor, the friendly neighborhood witch. Who was Stella in her own story?

I’ve always thought dying would be a little bit like dissolving into the sun. We leave our little frames behind and see the whole picture for the first time. The entire panorama. I like to feel the sun on my face because I can practice living and practice dying. Both at the same time. 

I watched her, struggling for perfection, this woman who had been struggling for perfection for more than twenty years, and I was fascinated. 

This is why I loved choreographing. This is why it was better than dancing. Instead of trying to contort myself into someone else’s vision, I would take what was already inside me and find the perfect vessel for it. 

Living our lives as though we expect it to be forgotten. As though now is all that matters. It might be easier on the mind to live like that, but it’s harder in the soul. 

You’re bigger than us. And after everything’s said and done, we depend on your goodwill. Not just to make things easier. For survival. If you want, to you can kill us, and we know it.

This wasn’t the movies in our lives didn’t work that way. Someone was always, always watching us and it was too late. It had been too late since I pushed him through the window. It had been too late long before then. Besides, I didn’t want to cover this up. Monstrous and horrible as his body had become, as horrified as I was that I actually killed somebody, I also felt like I was watching the stage at the end of the best dance I’ve ever made. In the darkness, I felt my mother beside me. Smiling. Maybe, after everything, this was her legacy. She spent her life performing for the void but two hands on Daniel‘s chest and I flip the script, made the only ballet that could ever truly be for us and about us at the same time. And achieved what she never could: we had become the spectators for once. We had been the ones to please. And he was the one who failed. His death was my masterpiece. Because that’s all ballet is, in the end. Just bodies moving through time and space.  

 

Absolutely stunning novel. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Abortion, Addiction, Alcoholism, Murder, and Adult/minor relationship

Minor: Infertility, Grief, Death, Blood, Miscarriage, Infidelity, Death of parent, and Sexism

bookwormsandcoffeestains's review

dark emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Toxic relationship, Adult/minor relationship, Toxic friendship, and Alcoholism

Minor: Death of parent, Addiction, Body shaming, Chronic illness, Abortion, Miscarriage, Infidelity, Pregnancy, Grief, Infertility, and Abandonment

Additional TW: revenge porn

beth_s98's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Murder, and Eating disorder

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Body horror, Injury/Injury detail, Infidelity, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Blood, Body shaming, Terminal illness, Infertility, Toxic relationship, Pregnancy, Sexual content, and Sexual harassment

rusty_moonshadow's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, Sexual violence, Grief, Sexism, Domestic abuse, Pregnancy, Murder, and Sexual harassment

Moderate: Body shaming, Cancer, Death of parent, Death, Dysphoria, Eating disorder, Gaslighting, Grief, Medical content, Pregnancy, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Infertility, Alcoholism, Car accident, Fatphobia, Miscarriage, Abortion, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, and Infidelity

Minor: Vomit

ukponge's review

dark emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Infidelity, Infertility, and Sexual assault

thenovelbookshelf's review

challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

A compelling novel of three ballerinas, friends from youth and ballet school, and their friendship, competitiveness and relationships throughout their dancing life.
  
This isn't a book about ballerinas, but rather a journey of the hardships dancers go through to be the best they can be and want to be.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Misogyny, Abortion, Alcoholism, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Medical content

Minor: Death of parent, Infertility, Blood, Cancer, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Murder, Pregnancy, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, and Vomit

mondovertigo's review

dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Death, Toxic friendship, Injury/Injury detail, Alcoholism, Medical content, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Cancer, Misogyny, Infidelity, and Death of parent

Moderate: Murder, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Grief, Pregnancy, Eating disorder, Abortion, Adult/minor relationship, Emotional abuse, Infertility, Miscarriage, and Sexual violence

Minor: Suicidal thoughts

nini23's review against another edition

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No

2.0

Why is it that trauma is written so easily on women's bodies? It's so readable if you know how to look.

This book purports to write about women, and specifically ballerinas, how their bodies are contorted physically and metaphorically to fit pleasing aesthetics.  However, it becomes very clear that this is a story about white women, since as Delphine the narrator states matter-a-factly there are less than a handful of racialized ballerinas at this exalted Paris ballet company.  There are still more offhand remarks that the colour of the ballet shoes don't complement darker skin colours, another shrug.  When Delphine as a ballet choreographer is asked to devise a contemporary feminist piece or one with more racial diversity, she claims she can only do one or the other. While the fury over patriarchy, male gaze and sexual predation is clear from the text, so is the indifference toward the lack of opportunities in this rarified field to POC women. Their stories and struggles don't even warrant a mention.  If white young women are getting groomed and preyed on, then how much worse would it be for a young POC woman trying to get a foothold in an almost all white field? How much abuse are they silently taking? Feminism is not feminism unless it includes all women.

And can we have a true bona fide childfree woman in a story for once? 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Cancer, Infidelity, Misogyny, Toxic friendship, and Abortion

Minor: Miscarriage

alisonhp's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Grim, but still beautiful and compelling, and very human. I’m not sure a novel about ballerinas would be believable if it weren’t depressing, and the story weaves a narrative that extends beyond dancers to women and the fight to exist in and beyond our bodies. The characters engage in a palpable struggle with aging, and the resilience in their lives and relationships felt unexpectedly uplifting to me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abortion, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Body shaming, Cancer, Death, Death of parent, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Infertility, Infidelity, Murder, Pregnancy, Sexism, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, and Toxic relationship