The Old Ballerina
Reviews

Light and lovely, Cooney’s third novel (after Small Town Girl and All the Way Home is about the way one superb ballet teacher, indomitable, aging Irene Kamsky, touches the lives of her students and alters her community. From a dance studio in her ranch-style home, located in a suburb north of a nondescript town, she and her art shape the stories of many characters, each narrating his or her own chapter in this slender novel. Among the unpretentious ballerina’s admirers (all refer to her, respectfully, as Mrs. Kamsky_ are her devoted assistant, Margaret Dunlap, who gets the job under false pretenses, but learns to love her employer, doing everything from caring for Mrs. Kamsky’s arthritic hip to monitoring her record collection; tortured Lisette, Mrs. Kamsky’s legendary student, once a serious ballerina until foot injuries forced her to become a teacher herself, and who drinks to drown her sorrows; and Mrs. Kamsky’s current class of "boy ballerinas" who describe, in first-personal plural, their feelings before and after their first public performance. While its plot is slight, the novel is full of warmth and insight. Cooney’s not-quite-articulate characters are clumsily eloquent, whether it is Margaret describing her first glimpse of male dancers (‘If I never saw the moon before not even in pictures, and no one had told me that it existed . . . Would I know what it was?’) or the boys explaining how they learn to really listen to music (‘the notes of the music are going into us in the part of the brain where we know basic things’). Though it favors abstraction at the expense of cohesion, Cooney’s small novel is a valentine to the transformative power of art. -Publishers Weekly

Who says all ballerinas must be beautiful and young? In her third novel, Cooney tells a story about dance and its restorative powers. Irene Kamsky is an elderly former ballerina suffering from orthopedic problems who earns her living teaching ballet. When her beloved protegee leaves her, a heartbroken Kamsky starts up a class for teenaged boys (some of whom are real troublemakers). As the boys learn to love ballet, Kamsky’s passion for art and creativity is rekindled. Related by multiple narrators whose lives Kamsky has touched, this story showcases the author’s talent for telling compelling tales and crating flawed but lovable characters. Feisty, eccentric, and independent, Kamsky is an inspiring protagonist. Recommended for public libraries. -Library Journal

With prose that performs pirouettes and plis, The Old Ballerina tells a story about teaching and learning, the individual and the community, and above all, the healing power of the arts.