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by Colum McCann

Author:	Colum McCann
Subcategory:	Contemporary
Language:	English
Publisher:	Orion Pub Co (January 2003)
Pages:	352 pages
Category:	Fiction and Literature
Rating:	4.4
Other formats:	lrf txt mbr lit

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Additional Praise for Dancer. Also by Colum McCann. He kept his head down-maybe he was embarrassed by all us women working so hard, but it didn’t matter to us, it was our duty

Additional Praise for Dancer. For Allison, for Riva Hocherman. and for Ben Kiely, with my deepest thanks for your faith and inspiration. He kept his head down-maybe he was embarrassed by all us women working so hard, but it didn’t matter to us, it was our duty. 826. 0. Published: 2003.

Colum McCann (born 28 February 1965) is an Irish writer of literary fiction. He was born in Dublin, Ireland and now lives in New York. He is a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing in the Master of Fine Arts program at Hunter College, New York. He is a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing in the Master of Fine Arts program at Hunter College, New York with fellow novelists Peter Carey and Tea Obreht, and has visited many universities and colleges all over the world.

Fascinatin. triumph of voic. .

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At the turn of the century, Nathan Walker comes to New York City to take the most dangerous job in the country. A sandhog, he burrows beneath the East River, digging the tunnel that will carry trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Taking his inspiration from biographical facts, novelist Colum McCann tells the erotically charged story of the Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev through the cast of those who knew him: there is Anna Vasileva, Rudi's first ballet teacher, who rescues her protégé from the stunted life of his provincial town; Yulia, whose sexual and artistic ambitions are thwarted by her Soviet-sanctioned marriage; and.

See the soldiers dying in the snow. Feel the hunger tearing through their bodies. Watch them smoke horse shit through blackly brittle lips to keep warm

See the soldiers dying in the snow. Watch them smoke horse shit through blackly brittle lips to keep warm.

Электронная книга "Dancer: A Novel", Colum McCann Taking his inspiration from the biographical facts, McCann tells the story through a chorus of voices: there is Anna Vasileva, Rudi's first ballet teacher, who rescues he.

Электронная книга "Dancer: A Novel", Colum McCann. Эту книгу можно прочитать в Google Play Книгах на компьютере, а также на устройствах Android и iOS. Выделяйте текст, добавляйте закладки и делайте заметки, скачав книгу "Dancer: A Novel" для чтения в офлайн-режиме. Taking his inspiration from the biographical facts, McCann tells the story through a chorus of voices: there is Anna Vasileva, Rudi's first ballet teacher, who rescues her protégé from the stunted life of his town; Yulia, whose sexual and artistic ambitions are thwarted by her Soviet-sanctioned marriage; and Victor, the Venezuelan hustler, who reveals the lurid underside of the gay celebrity.

Colum McCann is the author of books including This Side of Brightness, Zoli, Songdogs and Let the Great World Spin

Colum McCann is the author of books including This Side of Brightness, Zoli, Songdogs and Let the Great World Spin. He has received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, a Pushcart Prize, and was named the first winner of the Grace Kelly Memorial Foundation Award and the Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award.

This novel opens with a scene of war which is destined to become a classic: trudging back from the front through a ravaged and icy wasteland, their horses dying around them, their own hunger rendering them almost savage, the Russian soldiers are exhausted as they reach the city of Ufa, desperate for food and shelter. They find both, and then music and dance. And there, spinning unafraid among them, dancing for the soldiers and anyone else who'll watch him, is one small pale boy, Rudolf. This is Colum McCann's dancer. Rudolf, a prodigy at six years old, became the greatest dancer of the century, redefined dance, rewrote his own life, and died of AIDS before anyone knew he had it. This is an extraordinary life transformed into extraordinary fiction by one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation. One kind of masculine grace is perfectly matched to another in Colum McCann's beautiful and daring novel.

Comments:

Blueshaper

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.

godlike

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.

Alister

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.

Tejar

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.

Billy Granson

I always wanted to be a ballet dancer however grew too tall so I love to read about ballet and the colorful dancers that make up part of the history of ballet. This book did not disappoint! Rudolph Nureyev was quite the dancer and very flamboyant. I enjoyed how the author took us back and forth from Rudi' s family in Russia to his life in the US. From his early life he knew he wanted to dance and the predominant theme throughout the book is that he lived to dance and there was little other reason to live. He spent part of his life in the US with quite an exclusive club; Warhol, Capote, Kennedy, Graham to name a few. Along with that lifestyle came sex and drugs. This book did not end with his death it just ended with you wanting to know more about this wonderful dancer.

Amis

I think the miraculousness of Colum McCann's writing can be better appreciated by reading his books Transatlantic and Let the World Spin. Both are Five Star+. Now there are others he's written that I haven't read as yet, so this is not meant to discount them. Like all masterful writers, he gives beautiful voice to those things we know deep down and have diffulculty articulating.

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