In retrospect, it astonishes me that we avoided a major quarrel for so long. Guardian: “ Astonish Me is a gripping, thoughtful and tightly-written novel, where ballet acts as an effective metaphor for all aspirations and disappointments. tonish -st-nish astonished astonishing astonishes Synonyms of astonish transitive verb 1 : to strike with sudden and usually great wonder or surprise He was too astonished to speak They were astonished by the vastness and majesty of the cathedral.Time: “What might seem like one of the novel’s few letdowns is in some ways another one of its strengths: the quest for perfection is far more thrilling than actually achieving it.”.

Her book, which spans three decades and is told from multiple points of view, is at once a mash-up of late-20th-century ballet’s hottest tabloid hits.” If, like me, you can dimly remember the furore that arose when Mikhail Baryshnikov defected to the United States, and if, like. For her second novel, “Astonish Me,” Maggie Shipstead has leapt into this difficult territory - and landed, for the most part, on the same old stuff. The New York Times: “… fictional works revolving around ballet so often default to melodrama.However, I didn’t feel connected to any of the characters, and I thought the ending was rushed compared to the pace of the rest of the book. For a novel about ballet and ballet dancers, this book (I thought) was not overly melodramatic, and I found it to be well-written and pleasant to read. Astonish Me has a rare and delightful programme of Tales from five South Pacific nations, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Solomon Islands,and Tahiti where music.

Astonish me