GIVEAWAY – 3 copies of Deadly Dancing at the Seaview Hotel: SCARBOROUGH
Contemporary novel set in ST PETERSBURG
1st April 2025
City of Night Birds by Juhea Kim, a contemporary novel set in St Petersburg.
Yes, ballet is at the heart of this novel but it doesn’t overwhelm the narrative. The story focusses more on the character of its central protagonist, Natalia Leonova, who is back in St Petersburg having peaked in her career. An accident forced an early retirement, her goals left unfulfilled and now she is almost a a shadow of her professional self. She relies on various substances to help her manage her days and memories of the gifted dancers with whom she flew high, and now she is alone and struggling.
In the city, one of those dancers, Dimitri, seeks her out and offers her a new and tantalising direction in life. But of course, this is not a simple choice. The echoes of her life to date crowd in, subsumed into the very core of her being, from her humble beginnings through to huge accolades at the height of her success – and to where she finds herself now.
The story is quite workmanlike (in a positive way) and it was, on occasion, hard to really engage with the characters but as an insight into the struggles, both personal and professional that plagued Natalia throughout her life, this is a cohesive and well put together novel.
The main setting – St Petersburg – comes through quite vividly.
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