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Dancing on Thorns: A Novel
 
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Dancing on Thorns: A Novel [Hardcover]

Rebecca Horsfall (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)


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Book Description

August 30, 2005
Ten years in the making, this sweeping, evocative, and graceful novel will capture the hearts of readers with its vivid portrayal of a close-knit group of friends and a love that won’t be denied.

Jonni Kendal and Jean-Baptiste St. Michel have come to London separately in pursuit of their dreams. Michel is haunted by the man who abandoned him as a child. Driven by his determination to forge a life for himself outside the shadow of his father’s famous name, he’s ambitious, talented, and dangerously attractive–but suspicious of emotional attachments.

Full of courage but naïve, Jonni is determined to excel as an actress. Just nineteen, she’s made up her mind to escape the narrow, parochial life her parents have planned for her. When Michel rescues Jonni one night and takes her home, there’s an immediate attraction. Jonni soon finds herself embraced by an exciting new world filled with bohemian dancers and musicians, a family of planets orbiting around their sun–Michel.

But before Michel can commit to any kind of future–with or without Jonni–he must free himself from his past. And when tragedy brings him to the edge of a fiery burnout, Jonni and the pair’s friends must rally to save all they have come to count on.

In Dancing on Thorns, Rebecca Horsfall has captured the vulnerability and passion of young artists in achingly beautiful prose. Through characters who live and love as grandly as the art that consumes them, we witness a world that is by turns seductive and heartbreaking.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Horsfall's elaborately wrought, mammoth debut delineates the rise to fame of a gifted young dancer with an exalted lineage and his troubled love affair with a similarly ambitious actress. Discovered at age 16 by dowager étoile Nadia Petrovna, young Jean-Baptiste St. Michel is struggling under the burden of his absent, famous dancer-choreographer father. Petrovna recognizes Michel's natural brilliance despite his technical deficiencies and apprentices him to her megalomaniacal disciple, Charles Crown, who heads up the Islington Ballet, a cutting-edge London company. After years of torturous effort, Michel, grown single-minded, arrogant and technically perfect, attains the rank of soloist and becomes a jealously guarded treasure among the maverick troupe. Offstage, he is the nucleus of a bright group of stars, a clique that comes to include the pretty, fledging actress, Jonni Kendal, whom Michel eventually marries. Yet in order to attain peace in his professional and personal life, the alluring, emotionally diffident dancer must confront the parental sins of a chilly mother and a snide, insulting father he finally meets in his late 20s. In this stately pas de deux of a novel, Horsfall patiently, fluently takes on the larger-than-life personalities that inhabit the lofty realm of the dance world. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Horsfall takes readers behind the scenes of the ballet world in this sumptuous tale of love and ambition, sacrifice and redemption. As struggling artists, dancer Jean-Baptiste St. Michel and actress Jonni Kendal are just two among the hordes of young hopefuls who flock to London in pursuit of their life's passion, brimming with all the energy and optimism of the truly innocent. Of the two, Michel is the more talented and driven, zealously striving to overcome the specter of his famous father, an internationally acclaimed ballet choreographer whom Michel has never known. As Michel and Jonni's love affair blossoms within the warm embrace of Michel's peripatetic company of fellow dancers, disaster strikes one of their closest friends, handing the lovers a devastating setback. Horsfall's first novel is an ambitous and accomplished tour de force, and, at 800 pages, truly epic in scope. Lusciously evocative, sensuously atmospheric, it ineluctably pulls the reader into an ethereal yet brutal world of fiery passions and unrequited desires. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 800 pages
  • Publisher: Ballantine Books (August 30, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0345479785
  • ISBN-13: 978-0345479785
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,185,784 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.8 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put it down., September 9, 2005
This review is from: Dancing on Thorns: A Novel (Hardcover)
I really couldn't stop reading this novel once I started. Jonni and Michel and Primo and Lisa and Annette and Roly just pulled me right in. I hope lots of people will discover Rebecca Horsfall because she's a great storyteller. You don't have to love dance to enjoy the novel, either. Ballet is a big part of it, but really this is a novel about friends and lovers who survive through all the good times and bad.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Immerse yourself in the world of ballet, December 5, 2005
By 
This review is from: Dancing on Thorns: A Novel (Hardcover)
Follow the life and dancing career of Jean Baptiste St. Michel. As a little boy he was determined to excel at dancing to attract his famous father's attention. His love of dancing and his talent took over his life. Michel, as he was known was the best in the world. Jonni Kendall met him at a party and fell in love with him. However, she would always come second to dance. Michel and Jonni had a wide network of friends. Their lives are shattered when the unexpected happens. So much happens throughout this extended novel. It is a unique friendship and mentoring relationship between Charles and Michel. Lisa helps him open his eyes to the rest of the world. Michel pushes himself to go back to his mother Carrie. After reading, you feel like an expert on all ballet movements. Treasure this illustrious work of fiction.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Good read., December 26, 2005
This review is from: Dancing on Thorns: A Novel (Hardcover)
It all starts with Jean St. Michel when he is sixteen-years-old. Infamous Nadia Petrovna sets her choreographer's sights on young Michel. Her choreographer, Charles Crown, is considered talented, but dangerous, within the dancing art circles. But Michel can't afford Crown. At least not until a certain letter arrived.

Jonni Kendal is determined to be an actress. When she and Michel get together, sparks fly. But it is not all rosy. Both, especially Michel, will be pushed to their very limits... Perhaps beyond.

**** Author Rebecca Horsfall takes the glamorous life of the arts, strips it down to its harsh reality, and presents it to you, the reader. See what the world of art is really like. At the same time, you will cheer characters on as they reach for the stars. ****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.
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