All the Sundays Yet to Come: A Skater's Journey [Hardcover]

Kathryn Bertine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2003

Anyone who has known-or been-a little girl dreaming of becoming a skater, ballerina, or professional athlete will love this comic, heartfelt memoir about what happens after those dreams come true. After years of intensive training, Bertine finally becomes a professional figure skater-and finds herself traveling through South America with 'Hollywood on Ice,' a portable ice rink and an international cast of odd characters in tow. At show time, the costume trailer is transformed into a bizarre half-Disney, half-Penthouse maelstrom of activity as the skaters apply false eyelashes the size of caterpillars and wriggle into ever more revealing costumes-from The Little Mermaid to Flashdance. Some performers dress as farm animals and others are the real thing: an actual cow, duck, and chicken take the ice in their very own skates. But the real show-stopper is the Michael Jackson number, starring a blond, middle-aged Canadian whose beer belly barely fits into his flashy spandex costume. When Bertine realizes that going pro means betraying all her athletic ideals, she plots a daring escape straight out of Mission Impossible-breaking into a safe to steal back her passport between the Barbie scene and the Flintstones on Ice number! A vivid and entertaining account of the darker side of showbiz, ALL THE SUNDAYS YET TO COME is also a poignant and utterly winning story of a female athlete's spirit and perseverance.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this no-holds-barred memoir, Bertine tells how she set her heart on making it to the top in the skating world, was accepted into the Ice Capades in the late 1990s and lost her dream when the company folded just as she was about to join. Determined to be a professional skater at any cost, she joined lesser ice shows, first Holiday on Ice, where she performed in Europe dressed in animal costumes, and then Hollywood on Ice, where she traveled to remote South American villages in a circus-style caravan, sleeping in shabby hotels and changing costumes in a crowded, smelly trailer. Even more demoralizing, the skaters in this show were subjected to Sunday weigh-ins, for skinniness was the goal, and she was deemed overweight because of the muscular body she had worked hard to develop. Obsessed with becoming thin, she starved herself until she became physically and mentally ill. Finally, after realizing that she had a serious problem, she made elaborate plans to escape, until the show downsized, releasing her. She returned home, regained her health, became a triathlete and now pursues that sport as ardently as skating. Bertine recounts all this in straightforward and often amusing prose, condemning people and venues that have disappointed her: her mother, who apparently wanted a glamour girl, not an athlete, for a daughter; her wealthy hometown of Bronxville, N.Y.; and the ice shows. She also presents a harrowing description of the levels of degradation to which she sank because of the eating disorder. Her book should serve as a cautionary tale for ambitious young people who hope to make it to the top in the sports world.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"...hits a literary triple lutz...insightful, honest, and best of all, irreverent...." -- Larry Colton, author

"Bertine...illuminates with vivid detail the glossy but eccentric corners of the professional figure skating business..." -- Kirk Johnson, author

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1st edition (November 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316099015
• ISBN-13: 978-0316099011
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,531,794 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very real and heart-warming book, September 20, 2005

By 

Keila (AZ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: All the Sundays Yet to Come: A Skater's Journey (Hardcover)

I just wanted to say that I loved this book. Kate is an awesome person and a great coach (I know first-hand, she coached me when I was really young!). Not only is she great on the ice, but she proves her self as a valid author through her book. This book very accurately portrays how the life of a skater is. People think that anorexia is for the weak-minded, but in reality it can strike anyone. Athletes are not weak-minded at all. The book does a good job showing the pressures of sport and family and the toll these pressures can take on one's mind and body. It's a great book to read, even if you dont know much about figure skating!

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Balances on a thin edge, December 13, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: All the Sundays Yet to Come: A Skater's Journey (Hardcover)

I am not normally a fan of memoirs of difficult childhoods, wherein authors scan their lives to find external causes for the difficulties they've faced. And what the heck does a twentysomething have to fill a memoir anyway? Even with all that, I found this book to be well worth buying and reading.

This book has very funny and very powerful writing in it, sometimes simultaneously. She is a good story-teller, and the book was very hard to put down. Most importantly, Bertine does a great job, in my opinion, of balancing on the thin line between thoughtful analysis of her life and the people in it and self-indulgent blaming.

At several points throughout the book, just when I was sure the author was going to spiral into the self-indulgent, and that I was going to have to put the book down with a groan, Bertine turned on herself, pointedly describing her own shortcomings and their source within her own self, making me realize that this book was not written about her family, or her home town, or "the seamy underbelly of the figure skating world", but is, in fact, Bertine's story of how she got to know herself.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Expose, August 17, 2008

By 

Hannah P. Pearce (Charlottesville, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: All the Sundays Yet to Come: A Skater's Journey (Hardcover)

This book really engrossed me. I don't know the first thing about skating, and I'm a mediocre runner at best, but I'm an avid armchair traveller, and I loved hearing about what the author went through. It was a nice structure for the book to see her grow up and go from young skater to disillusioned older skater to fulfilled triathelete. Good job! Can't wait to read the next one!