An intense, contrapuntal novel of exquisite intelligence and sensitivity. While Phebe knows ballet to the marrow, she’s also aware that she cannot dance “and think of other things.” She leaves her adored journalist mother to live in Geneva for the summer with her father, a retired diplomat. He has taken charge of a young chess player, Kolya, who has freed himself from his own abusive father in the hope of finding the mysterious grandmaster Stas. Kolya and Phebe recognize that the patterns of chess and ballet have left similar imprints on their souls, in what matters to them, and in how they make choices. The first-person narrative shifts from Phebe to Kolya: Phebe understands her body but not the world; Kolya represses attachment and emotion deliberately lest it get in the way of a beautiful game. Freymann-Weyr’s language is as precise as a blade: Phebe and Kolya’s decisions about their future make a quiet and satisfying resolution to this profoundly stirring work. (Fiction. YA)
