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Dancer A Novel Colum McCann Books

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Dancer A Novel Colum McCann Books

i am a huge colum mc cann fan, and as a young dance student, i idolized rudolph nureyev, so i fully expected to like this novel. i was right.
it is fiction, but it sticks pretty closely to the actual facts about nureyev's life and personality, following his life from early childhood to his death. it captures a dancer who places his art above everything else in life, but who is nonetheless deeply connected to and in need of the people in his life. he is not one of those chilly artists. he feels strongly and has deep -- if sometimes easily put aside -- attachments.
what is particularly affecting in mc cann's book is how the nureyev character is mostly seen through his effect on those around him. there are some sections that follow his own thoughts, but mostly, it is the thoughts and feelings of the people in his life which give the picture of the man : charming, vulnerable, attractive in his ways, but also callous, utterly self-centered, damaged. the other characters often can not help but love him, despite the damage he leaves behind him.
mc cann is a great writer. his characters are finely drawn -- individuals with unique voices.


Tags : Amazon.com: Dancer: A Novel (9780312423186): Colum McCann: Books,Colum McCann,Dancer: A Novel,Picador,0312423187,Biographical,FICTION Biographical,Fiction,Fiction - Historical,Fiction Literary,Fiction-Literary,GENERAL,General Adult,Historical - General,Sports

Dancer A Novel Colum McCann Books Reviews

Having loved other novels by this author, I had high hopes for Dancer. The story of Nureyev is beautifully written, his early life in the post-war USSR well-described. And yet, the dancer, himself, becomes less likeable the more his fame increases. I remember Nureyev's defection, his career and his death from AIDS. I think McCann worked hard to be true to the life of this extraordinary dancer, and did a good job getting inside his head, but I found myself skipping ahead in many places, wishing he would move the story along not really caring what happened when the dancer met Rock Hudson, etc. I often had a sense that I was reading material that had already been covered. I also found it difficult in some places to tell who was being used as the narrative voice when the point of view shifted.
McCann is a truly gifted and admirable writer. He is not "easy to read," but his writing demands that you choose either to reach deeply into life or close his book.

I recall years ago -- in my reading chair under a comfortable light, --reading Barry Unsworth's, "Sacred Hunger," and getting at least a vicarious sense of the horror of what it may really have been like for an African on a slave ship heading for the Americas. I had the same feeling of experiencing someone else's emotional and physical pain reading Colum McCann's Dancer -- a whiff, at least a reader's empathetic, human shiver, at life in the Soviet Union before the Berlin wall came down.

Yes, the book is principally about that prodigious personality, Nureyev. It is worth its salt for its "memory tale," told through multiple voices, about this fascinating, complex, seemingly highly flawed human character. You are brought into full awareness (at least in McCann's perception) of the stunning, dangerous, perhaps shockingly promiscuous homosexual life in New York and other great cities before the scourge of AIDS. However that now-historical account may strike your sensibilities, this wonderful work of historically-guided imagination is worth the read on an entirely different score -- namely for its ability to give comfortable western readers at least a small sense of the physical deprivation and psychological terror of living in Russia in the time frame of this novel. This book can stand with Tim O'Brien's, "The Things They Carried," as proof of the point that stories -- fiction and subjective "memory" -- can tell us more of the deep, raw emotional truth of life than what can be conveyed by an historical, factual account in the hands of even the most gifted writer. McCann's prologue quote from William Maxwell is, in itself, worth the read. It is the novel, however, that illuminates the sense and truth of the Maxwell quote, and places it in the emotional center of human life.
There is a wonder captured in this incredible saga that seems too "fantastic" to be anything close to reality, but I was once touched by the madness of its wonder, and by association I became a believer in the "dancer." For me, on a personal level, this was a fantastic read and an affirmation of a wonderful moment in my own experience. Late one night, early one morning, I "danced" with Rudi Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn in Malibu, CA, outside the home of Jascha Heifitz. The detail and circumstance of this chance meeting, all that led up to the moment, and what transpired afterward, made perfect 'sense' within the whirlwind structure-less life of the "dancer." Why was I there? Why were 'they' there? How did it come to pass that we would dance together under the light of the moon? It all made sense in that moment. At that time. People look at me and say, "Right, as if!" Skeptics abound! The natural progressions of Nureyev's living and dancing, and his travels and accomplishments and performances can be experienced but not necessarily understood.
As a ballet nerd who has enjoyed McCann's work in the past, I expected to like ~Dancer~ more than I did.

Unfortunately, while McCann's evocative style shines through, the story suffers from a disjointed narrative style. McCann shifts between first and third person frequently, which could a useful device if the voices of the first-person narrators were more clearly developed.

Perhaps the most effective component of the entire novel the way the titular Dancer becomes not so much a central protagonist, but a foil reflecting the other characters and the challenging times circumstances in which they live.

On the whole, not a bad read, but not a great one, either. ~Dancer~ left me with a sense of a potentially-great work approached capriciously and ultimately left incomplete—and while one might see that as a keen analogy for life of Rudolf Nureyev, I don't it was intended as such.

TL;DR 5/10ish, worth a read if you're a ballet nut. Expect to regularly grit your teeth over the phrase "toe shoes."
i am a huge colum mc cann fan, and as a young dance student, i idolized rudolph nureyev, so i fully expected to like this novel. i was right.
it is fiction, but it sticks pretty closely to the actual facts about nureyev's life and personality, following his life from early childhood to his death. it captures a dancer who places his art above everything else in life, but who is nonetheless deeply connected to and in need of the people in his life. he is not one of those chilly artists. he feels strongly and has deep -- if sometimes easily put aside -- attachments.
what is particularly affecting in mc cann's book is how the nureyev character is mostly seen through his effect on those around him. there are some sections that follow his own thoughts, but mostly, it is the thoughts and feelings of the people in his life which give the picture of the man charming, vulnerable, attractive in his ways, but also callous, utterly self-centered, damaged. the other characters often can not help but love him, despite the damage he leaves behind him.
mc cann is a great writer. his characters are finely drawn -- individuals with unique voices.