Joan thinks she’s left ballet behind, but when young Harry’s talent for it can no longer be ignored, she finds herself pulled back into that world, which is still Arslan’s, too. I won’t spoil anything for you in saying that Joan and Arslan do not, in fact, end up married she marries Jacob, who becomes a psychiatrist specializing in gifted children, and they move to southern California where they raise their son, Harry. She has pushed aside the devotion of a high school sweetheart, Jacob Bintz, and fallen hard for Arslan Rusakov, a Russian ballet star whom she has helped defect from the Soviet Union (in a hilarious, touchingly absurd scene that may be my favorite from the book). How do people change? How do they love someone at one time and then not love them at another? What are the repercussions of such change? Astonish Me explores these ideas through the rotating perspectives of its characters: lovers, artists, and - perhaps with the most resonance in Shipstead’s novels thus far– parents and children.Īstonish Me opens with Joan as a young dancer in New York, devoted to ballet though it’s clear she doesn’t have the talent to move beyond the corps. But for Joan, whose life has been focused on the tunnel vision of her art, it’s an honest and truly perplexing question.

It’s an innocent-sounding question, and not one you might expect from an adult who’s lived in major cities and danced with professional ballet companies. “How do people change?” Joan Bintz asks her husband, Jacob, and son, Harry, as they drive to a local performance of The Nutcracker on an evening just before Christmas.

Astonish me