STARTING FROM HERE

A teenage girl from South Dakota leaves home in hopes of reaching her potential as a ballerina, but her path is littered with obstacles.

René and her brother, Leon, are both wonderful dancers, but their father can’t stomach the idea of a boy “traipsing around in a tutu.” Instead, he and his wife, Eve, put all their hopes and dreams into René. They realize she can never become a top ballerina if she trains only in their hometown in South Dakota, so Eve finds a family in Phoenix willing to take her in. René joins the ballet school of a master, but the other girls don’t accept her. Even when she limits herself to just a few hundred calories a day and sheds too many pounds, she can’t fit in. When she’s not invited back the following year, her mother finds her another placement in Denver. Unfortunately, she keeps getting herself into compromising situations with older men, perhaps because she has no guardians looking out for her. It becomes less and less certain whether René will ever make it as a ballerina or even survive the period of her training. Told in the third person but following René throughout, the story is equal parts entertaining and maddening. While René’s parents continually complain about the sacrifices they are making to pay for her dance education, they also utterly neglect her and allow her to fall into one unpleasant or dangerous situation after another. Similarly, though Leon may have been a wonderful dancer, the author drops that thread without exploring it sufficiently. Even so, the book does explore issues of self-doubt, identity, and ambition with a depth that surpasses any of the characters’ abilities to understand their own struggles.

A coming-of-age story that doesn’t live up to its potential.