Eleven of the best fiction books & memoirs about ballet

Martha Anne Toll writes fiction, essays, and book reviews, and reads anything that’s not nailed down. Her debut novel, Three Muses, won the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction. Toll brings a long career in social justice to her work covering BIPOC and women writers. She is a book reviewer and author interviewer at NPR Books, the Washington Post, Pointe Magazine, The Millions, and elsewhere. She also publishes short fiction and essays in a wide variety of outlets. Toll has recently joined the Board of Directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation.

[My Book, The Movie: Three Muses; Q&A with Martha Anne Toll]

At Lit Hub Toll tagged eleven of the best fiction books and memoirs about ballet. One title on the list:

A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez

The travails of an immigrant family with a Chinese-Panamanian father and a German mother frame this novel. Their daughter finds refuge from her sad and chaotic household by taking ballet. While the ballet studio provides rigor, order, and predictability, it also makes clear her physical failings and other shortcomings. The ballet sections of this book are touching and real and Nunez’s craft is already on full display in her elegantly rendered debut.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue