That is until both Harry and Chloe, the daughter of their next-door neighbours, turn out to be ballet prodigies: where Joan was merely able, Harry shows signs of the genius and stamina that has earned Arslan legendary status. The family relocates to California where Joan finds compromised, contented obscurity. In quick succession she quits her career, marries an on-off boyfriend, geneticist Jacob, and has a son, Harry. Acceptance comes with recognition of the limits of her own aptitude. In 1975 she was selected to drive the getaway car that enabled Arslan's defection while he was on tour, and briefly, romantically, shared the limelight with him as he was feted in the US.īy 1977, Arslan's fame, egotism, multiple affairs and, eventually, impending marriage to a fellow Russian defector have reduced Joan to despair. The subsequent exchanges evolved into unusually intense discussions about the technicalities of their mutual craft. Returning to New York, she began to receive, through various intermediaries, letters from Arslan. A few years earlier, while working in Paris, Joan engineered a single passionate encounter with a Russian ballet star, Arslan Rusakov.

It's 1977, and, politically, the cold war is in permafrost. She's competent, even good, but will never make principal ballerina, unlike her friend Elaine. Joan Joyce is a dancer in a New York ballet corps.

Astonish me novel