Art is beautiful and makes this world a better place, but the inner life of people creating arts may be far from being beautiful.
City of Night Birds by Juhea Kim reveals the cruelty and merciless of the world of ballet. Once a talented and acclaimed prima ballerina, Natasha Leonova lives now from the glamorous memories what what she once was. An injury put her career on hold, opening the Pandora´s box of loneliness and pain.
But she wants to come back and use her talent and strength, although the challenges she may need to overcome are not only her own physical limitations but also the professional inimities and jealousies. It is a world where not talent may prevail, but the strength of overcoming various rivaries between colleagues.
The story is a back and forth inquiry through times, deeply emotional and nostalgic. It is a story about dreams of a better life, paid with a high price, in a world that brutally rejects failure of any kind.
Well-researched, with direct references to unfolding political and social conflicts but also to history of ballet and various classical dancing techniques, City of Night Birds is a fine written book where words were assigned a tremendous role in creating glamorous worlds. It is a story so human and emotional which connects arts to any other aspects of everyday life. Because the strongest art cannot exist disconnected from life. And life, in its fullest means conflict, emotions and struggle.
I haven´t read too many books about ballet dancers, especially those belonging to the famous yet feared Bolshoi but it will very hard to find too soon a better writted book than City of Night Birds.
Rating: 5 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own
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