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A review by nfoutty
Isadora by Amelia Gray
4.0
Originally written for my newsletter The Cardigan Dispatch, tinyurl.com/cardigandispatch
TLDR: Isadora is a beautiful and complex novel, but one that seems like a love-it-or-hate-it situation. I loved it, but one has to enter this reading with the understanding that this won’t be anything resembling a biography.
I learned about Isadora by Amelia Gray on an episode of Call Your Girlfriend, and I knew it had to get on my list. A famous dancer, an award-winning absurdist author, and a 400-page novel? Some of my favorite things right there.
Isadora is not a biography: it’s a work of fiction based on the life of Isadora Duncan, the “mother of modern dance.” Duncan lead an extraordinary life—she was born in Oakland, rose to fame in Europe, mingled with the most famous artists of her day, had a series of lovers, saw the death of her two young children in a tragic accident, and ultimately died at age 50 when her dramatic scarf got caught in a tire. Gray sticks closely to the timeline of Isadora’s life, but expands out some of the sensational (read: false) things the dancer said in her autobiography.
It’s not what you expect when you think of a historical fiction novel—Gray’s style is (post?)modern in a way that borders on inaccessible. Isadora is a complex book, with shifting narrators and perplexing chapter titles. Gray shows us not only the tortured artist, but also those around her: Paris, the grieving father; Elizabeth, the sister who attempts to keep Isadora under control; Max, the jealous brother-in-law; and a colorful cast of characters from the sisters’ travels around Europe.
Isadora is bodily, but not in a dance-y way; there is lots of sexual energy and thoughts about the physical world, in addition to all sorts of unglamourous bodily functions. Gray focuses more on the psychology of Isadora as opposed to the dancing, perhaps because there is only one video of Isadora’s dancing left, although her choreography survives (this piece entitled “Mother” and choreographed after her children’s death is especially powerful). The novel is full of references to Greek tradition, which is unsurprising given Isadora’s love of Greek figures, which inspired much of her work. Grieving mother Clytemnestra and abandoned woman Euridice are the centers of this focus.
Beyond a few on-the-nose moments, including some of the Clytemnestra writing and a moment where Isadora sees the ghost of Percy Shelley underwater, Isadora is a beautiful novel that I’d highly recommend for a rather dark but gorgeous read.
TLDR: Isadora is a beautiful and complex novel, but one that seems like a love-it-or-hate-it situation. I loved it, but one has to enter this reading with the understanding that this won’t be anything resembling a biography.
I learned about Isadora by Amelia Gray on an episode of Call Your Girlfriend, and I knew it had to get on my list. A famous dancer, an award-winning absurdist author, and a 400-page novel? Some of my favorite things right there.
Isadora is not a biography: it’s a work of fiction based on the life of Isadora Duncan, the “mother of modern dance.” Duncan lead an extraordinary life—she was born in Oakland, rose to fame in Europe, mingled with the most famous artists of her day, had a series of lovers, saw the death of her two young children in a tragic accident, and ultimately died at age 50 when her dramatic scarf got caught in a tire. Gray sticks closely to the timeline of Isadora’s life, but expands out some of the sensational (read: false) things the dancer said in her autobiography.
It’s not what you expect when you think of a historical fiction novel—Gray’s style is (post?)modern in a way that borders on inaccessible. Isadora is a complex book, with shifting narrators and perplexing chapter titles. Gray shows us not only the tortured artist, but also those around her: Paris, the grieving father; Elizabeth, the sister who attempts to keep Isadora under control; Max, the jealous brother-in-law; and a colorful cast of characters from the sisters’ travels around Europe.
Isadora is bodily, but not in a dance-y way; there is lots of sexual energy and thoughts about the physical world, in addition to all sorts of unglamourous bodily functions. Gray focuses more on the psychology of Isadora as opposed to the dancing, perhaps because there is only one video of Isadora’s dancing left, although her choreography survives (this piece entitled “Mother” and choreographed after her children’s death is especially powerful). The novel is full of references to Greek tradition, which is unsurprising given Isadora’s love of Greek figures, which inspired much of her work. Grieving mother Clytemnestra and abandoned woman Euridice are the centers of this focus.
Beyond a few on-the-nose moments, including some of the Clytemnestra writing and a moment where Isadora sees the ghost of Percy Shelley underwater, Isadora is a beautiful novel that I’d highly recommend for a rather dark but gorgeous read.