SPINNING: Choreography for Coming Home
Sometimes it takes a new stage to heal old wounds.
When Janine Kovac gives birth to micro preemie twins nearly four months before they are due, she channels the grace and strength that carried her through a successful ballet career. The human body has amazing healing powers if you just know how to listen to it. But old habits bring up old haunts and bitter memories—the futile quest for perfection and a career-ending injury. In the sterile, fluorescent world of the NICU, ballet breeds hope as the twins make a miraculous recovery. Can it also bring resolution to the dancer so many years after the abrupt and painful end to the career she loved so much?
Semi Finalist
Plot/Idea: 10 out of 10
Originality: 10 out of 10
Prose: 10 out of 10
Character/Execution: 10 out of 10
Overall: 10.00 out of 10
Assessment:
Plot: This book is skillfully plotted and well-paced. The story is deeply engaging; one doesn't have to be a parent to find the book suspenseful and rich.
Prose: The honest, vulnerable, sometimes brutal, and always exceptional prose of this memoir hooks and rewards the reader.
Originality: There is nothing cliche about this story. It is compelling and unique.
Character Development: Janine Kovac and her family are well-defined and relatable. Janine is honest and uncompromising about her thoughts and feelings, and her ballet analogies and reminiscences add perspective and even more depth to an already powerful text.
Blurb: A tremendous book: a thrilling find for any reader and a tour-de-force for the author.
Date Submitted: August 23, 2017
