The Sleeping Beauty - Softcover

Adam and Sandra are dancers, friends since they were fifteen, now lovers. She is in the corps of the New York City Ballet and has just caught the eye of legendary director George Balanchine. He is an explosively gifted new star who has defected to a rival company. They are in love, both of them passionate and ambitious, but ill-prepared to handle the demands, seductions, and expectations that are visited on them as they come within reach of their dreams.

In Sandra, for years an unnoticed member of the corps, Balanchine identifies his last muse and plans to write a Sleeping Beauty for her to star in, his final and greatest ballet. But Balanchine's favour comes at a price, and forces Sandra to decide between two loves. Should she continue her troubled involvement with her first love and follow his vision of their future? Or should she accept all that the Balanchine offers - the fulfilment of a dream nurtured from childhood, during those endless hours at the barre?

'Ravishing... Sharp fully inhabits the troubled psyches and hard-driven bodies of her commanding yet maddening characters, describing with transporting detail everything from a costume's cut and sparkle to a tragic kiss. Sharp's bewitchingly sensual and trenchant tale embodies the sublime and the monstrous aspects of dance and explores our depthless capacity for exultation and suffering.' Booklist

‘A compulsively readable and undeniably juicy portrayal of offstage life during the ‘ballet boom.’ The plot zips along on Sharp’s lyrical writing style, and emotionality rises like steam off the page.’ San Francisco Chronicle