First Love
by Adrienne Sharp
List Price:
Our Price: $1.49
You Save: $23.46 (94%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Adrienne SharpEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-07-11
ISBN: 1573223107
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Book Reviews of First Love
Book Review: "Whatever is lush within me will be yours"
Summary: 5 Stars
Using the three-act ballet Sleeping Beauty as a framing device, author Adrienne Sharp as written an exquisitely melodramatic tale of love, longing and beauty. Weaving historical fact into a fictitious narrative, Sharp tells the story of Adam La Salle and Sandra Ellis, two ambitious and talented young ballet dancers who danced together as childhood friends, and are now romantically involved with each other.
It is 1981 and two major companies, The New York City Ballet and The American Ballet Theatre, are governing the American ballet world. Adam has become one of ABT's greatest dancers, admired by all, and sort after all over the world. The epitome of physical perfection and beauty, Adam has recently left the New York City ballet to come to the ABT "to be a prince, and a star." But lately, Adam has become disillusioned with fame and fortune, realizing that there just aren't quite enough spotlights to go around.
Meanwhile, Sandra has been slogging it out, night-after-night treading the boards in the corps de ballet for the New York City Ballet. The Company is run by the dictatorial and officious George Balanchine, who selects the girls like its an accident of god - this one chosen, that one left behind, his decisions autocratic, impossible to challenge, and utterly demoralizing. Sandra is a uniquely gifted dancer and she knows all about waiting, better than Adam, but it just breaks her heart that "Mr. B" doesn't notice her.
Sandra watches with a combination of admiration and despair as Balanchine rehearses with the great Suzanne Farrell. She's fraught with longing as she witnesses these poses of supplication, of offering, of benediction, and of consummation. For Sandra, has thrived in this world - on the inexorable journey from one level to the next, from the pink tights and black leotards of the beginners in A division to the graduating D class. She had expected the journey from corps de ballet to ballerina to be just as sure, but lately it has become laden with problems.
Her affair with Adam is becoming serious. Adam wants her badly and she wants him, but they're both so young and Sandra doubts whether she can possibly sacrifice her career for marriage and family. Adam, however, has his own demons to contend with: he's become caught up in the transformation of the ordinary self to the exotic; the necessary part of the dancer's art, fueling the vanity that helps to propel them onto the vast intimidating stage. But like the fairy tales Adam dances - " like the wolf swallowing the granny whole" - the theatre seems to be opening opened its jaws and swallowing him.
Adam is tired of looking for life's consolation at the barre, tired of turning to dancing to make right what was not right in his life, He wants his life to be right, he wants to love Sandra and to have her love him, to be with him. When Balanchine finally notices Sandra and offers her the role of Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, the young dancer is force to make a choice; does she choose Adam or take up the opportunity to be the principal dancer in the greatest ballet of all time? Mr. B sees her as perfect - "tiny, sharp like a jewel, but fluid, elastic, expansive where he needed her to be."
Fearful of losing Sandra, and fuelled on by drugs and indiscriminate sex, the sexually ambivalent Adam embarks on a serpentine path of self-destruction, almost ruining his dancing career. The only solace he finds is in the arms of his best-friend and surrogate father Randall, who is gradually wasting away from AIDS. Previously, the stage has been the only place where Adam felt he was in control - "the rest of his life becoming a shambles of broken contracts and open suitcases, of relationships equally broken and temporary." Dance was a place to dive away from it all, but he soon discovers that dancing was no balm, especially when it is Sandra who disturbs him.
But there's also Balanchine, an important contestant in this world where everyone is a "player strutting upon a stage for the fancy of the king, players even playing princes." He's seventy-five years old and is finally saying goodbye to the impulse that has driven him through life: the worship of a woman's beauty, the celebration and display of it. He feels the "muck of his loneliness," the muck he'd felt since he was ten and taken as a boarder at the Imperial Ballet School. Each year there were new friends, new dancers and new wives, but the need remained constant.
When Sandra dances into his life, Balanchine sees his final chance, and as he waits in the shadows of the wing, he grasps the one last hope - to see his beautiful Aurora realized. But is he making promises to a girl too naïve to see his pockets were empty, nothing there but lining? He has been through this so many times, that he's perhaps "the wrong prince thrashing in the brambles." He had gained entry and had kissed many princesses, but he could never really awaken them, could never make them really love him.
Sorrow, regret and almost uncontrolled passion permeate this astounding novel. But First Love also masterfully captures the beauty and grace of the world's finest art form. Sharp is an ex-dancer and obviously writes from experience, but she also writes from the heart, inscribing her novel like the ballet she so loves and instilling the narrative with grief, fear, madness, and unrequited love. This is a world where hard bargains are drawn, where sacrifice for art is de rigor, and where artistic and physical certainty is far from the defining principle. Mike Leonard July 05.
United States Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in United States Books
Mirth of a Nation: The Best Contemporary Humorby Michael J. Rosen
Harper Paperbacks; Published: 2000-02-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
The Gifts of the Bodyby Rebecca Brown
Harper Perennial; Published: 1995-08-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.94
Price in other shops:
Love and Liesby Kimberla Lawson Roby
William Morrow; Published: 2007-01-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.96
Price in other shops:
Blues Dancing: A Novelby Diane Mckinney-Whetstone
HarperTorch; Published: 2005-03-29; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Red, White & Liberal: How Left Is Right & Right Is Wrongby Alan Colmes
William Morrow Paperbacks; Published: 2004-10-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Hunger Point: A Novelby Jillian Medoff
Harpercollins; Published: 1997-02; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.00
Price in other shops:
The Price of Bloodby Chuck Logan
Harpercollins; Published: 1997-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $25.99
Blue Hour: Poemsby Carolyn Forche
Harper Perennial; Published: 2004-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.93
Price in other shops:
Blue Suburbia: Almost a Memoirby Laurie Albanese
Harper Perennial; Published: 2004-03-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
The Kindness of Strangers: A Novelby Katrina Kittle
William Morrow; Published: 2006-01-31; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.55
Price in other shops:
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
Ballet Class for BeginnersBALLET CLASS FOR BEGINNERS; Release date: 2004-08-31; DVD
Best price: $7.13
Price in other shops:
White Swan, Black Swan (Ballantine Reader's Circle)by Adrienne Sharp
Ballantine Books; Published: 2002-11-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.98
Price in other shops: