UPDATE: $2.99 kindle special today!This is my personal favorite Colum McCann book.I absolutely loved watching Rudolf Nureyev dance - mesmerized by his strength, grace, and talent -AND... I found this book sooooo wonderful! The storytelling was totally captivating. If you’re a dance fan... my god - you’ll love this book. If a ‘saga’ fan... you’ll love just learning about the world a great ballet dancer lived in. Old review: “Dancer"......by Colum McCann is a breathtaking tribute the Russian Balle...

February is that tricky month of winter dragging on and juggling books in the shortest month of the year. One book that almost fell by the wayside is Colum McCann’s Dancer. A little over a year ago I read a short essay by McCann giving his advice to young writers just starting out. I could see that he could flat out write, seeing that he has won a National Book Award for his work. Yet, with a short month, there is always that time constraint in the back of my mind. Recently, a Goodreads friend T...

" This is not a biography, it's a story, a novel, a tale. For a long time I toyed with the idea of calling it a false portrait" Taken from Colum McCann's interview online. This is the story of the life of Russian Dancer Rudolf Nureyev and the people that surrounded him and for me it was the surrounding characters that took centre stage in this superbly written novel.I have read a few of McCann's novels some I have liked better than others but this story from the first chapter where Russian

4.5 stars I waited until I finished reading this to watch him dance or to hear his voice in an interview. I wanted to see whether McCann had given us something of the real Rudolf Nureyev. What McCann does is give us beautiful language, visceral descriptions of war, descriptions that take you to the place in Russia where Rudolf Nureyev was raised, where he first danced, to the cities where he lived and danced, to the social circles of celebrity where he navigated, to his personal life style of ja...

This book is a fictional biography about the Russian ballet dancer, Rudolf Nureyev, and my first time reading Irish writer Colum McCann.As a result, I've had this extraordinarily gorgeous man dancing through my thoughts this week, as I journeyed through Colum McCann's book.It's a true rags to riches story, a boy born into abject poverty in 1930s communist Russia. A boy who has the desire and the instinct to dance, and through the help from some friends, rises to superstar status. Because of his

Dancer is a highly imaginative work of fiction that captured the life of Rudolf Nureyev, a Russian peasant who became the world’s most celebrated male ballet dancer in the twentieth century. Published in 2003, McCann’s third novel commemorated the tenth anniversary of Nureyev’s death. It is easy to be mesmerized by a story of an impoverished but talented child who, against all odds, rose to stardom and world renown. Yet, what McCann succeeded most in doing was creating in Nureyev (a.k.a Rudi or

As I started listening to the audio version of Dancer I was immediately enthralled by "Rudi" as we meet him as a young boy of six. I was struck by the fact that his very first public dance performance was in a hospital for soldiers home from the Russian front. Shortly thereafter young Rudi is taking ballet lessons and being beat by his disapproving father once he gets home. As the story proceeds it is told by various voices who tell about their own lives as well as Nureyevs’. Telling the story a...

4.5 Stars’Of course he danced perfectly, light and quick, pliant, his line controlled and composed, but more than that he was using something beyond his body–not just his face, his fingers, his long neck, his hips, but something intangible, beyond thought, some kinetic furry and spirit–and I felt a little hatred for him when the applause rang out.’ Technically, Nureyev’s story begins in 1941, in the Soviet Union, but this story begins in 1961 - albeit briefly - beginning with three pages listing...

This paints the essence of Rudolf Nureyev. Rudi’s uncontrollable drive to perfect dance, his Tatar heritage, his arrogance, his meanness, his loves, his rags to riches, and his generosity are exposed by McCann’s use of multiple narrators, compact sentences and extensive research. It’s a five star read for me because I forgive McCann’s need to randomly insert tiresome trope writing (repeating the same two lines for a page and a half). His brilliant composition outshines my personal irks.

I spent a week with Dancer by Colum McCann. The novel kept evolving under my eyes and this weekend I finished reading an entirely different book than the one I had begun with. Its very essence had morphed, not to mention its writing, and everything improved dramatically as I progressed, not the other way around. I’m left wondering: was this part of a plan? Or would Bob Ross applaud all the happy accidents that seem to make up this fictionalized biography, here?I’ve been a regular balletgoer for

Time for a well overdue re-read...

4.5 stars“Of course he danced perfectly, light and quick, pliant, his line controlled and composed, but more than that he was using something beyond his body—not just his face, his fingers, his long neck, his hips, but something intangible, beyond thought, some kinetic fury and spirit—and I felt a little hatred for him when the applause rang out.”I’ve been fantasizing about Rudolf Nureyev on and off for days since finishing this novel. Not just because of the stunning images I found afterwards,

4+ stars. In the epigraph at the beginning of ‘The Dancer,’ the author Colum McCann quotes William Maxwell, “In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.” Most of us can attest to that, drawing upon our own memories and then when comparing them with siblings, and other significants, find that our own accounts sometimes vary to the point of ‘did we share the same experience?’ The beauty of this multiple POV novel is a glimpse of the greatness of ballet as an art form,

This is fiction, but based on the true life events of the famed Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev (1938-1993). Through fiction the author attempts to show readers not only the external facts of Nureyev’s life but also how he perceived his own life. We are not so much told his inner thoughts, motivations and feelings, but we watch what he does and follow the crazed, hyped celebrity life and the frenzied gay-scene that lead to his death by AIDS. He defected Russia in 1961. We see how this impac...

Rudolf Nureyev is a fascinating subject. He led a very gaudy life and this fictionalization does it justice. I haven’t read any of the Nureyev biographies, but since I was alive while he was dancing I absorbed a lot of information about him contemporaneously. I watched him dance on TV. Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford to see him live until the 1980s (maybe the late 1970s) when he was getting old for a dancer, however seeing him was always a wonderful experience. Even when he wasn’t dancing, just...

This is certainly one of the very best biographical novels I've ever read. Truly unforgettable portrait of Nureyev and his passion and artistic drive.

Dancer was a masterclass in writing. I am generally not a fan of novels based on real people, but this one was impressive.I was familiar with Rudolf Nureyev, who was regarded as one of the greatest male ballet dancers of his generation and had a lasting influence on many male ballet dancers who followed. His name is often mentioned and referenced when it comes to ballet excellence. This novel introduced me to some biographical details. Told via different POVs from people who were close, peripher...

Thoughts soon.

2 stars - was okay - barely!McCann was just removed from my favored author list. I really struggled to complete this book. I also removed one star for the very poor punctuation in this book. One complete section was without any periods and capitalization at the beginning of sentences. What is that all about? What does that do for the book? What does that do for the reader? Only 336 pages and a mass production to take on. You had to guess at who the narrator was in each section of the book, until...

Dancer by Colum McCann was a stunning and beautifully written novel about the life and work of Rudolf Nureyev, the legendary tale about a Russian peasant boy from humble beginnings in Ufa outside of Leningrad and thus going on to become a world-renowned icon in the dance world. This vibrant and imaginative work is told from many perspectives which, at times, is dizzying in its kaleidoscopic effects as we see the complexities and yet the nuances of the life of Nureyev unfolding in such dramatic f...