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Summary
Summary
In the spring of 1991, a Russianballerina dreams of leaving Leningrad -- forever. A member of the Kirov Ballet Corps, Tatiana hopes to be chosen for the troupe's Paris tour. Once there, she will try to escape the watchful eye of KGB agents, defect to France, and leave the complicated politics of the Soviet Union behind. But like ballet, leaving is harder than it looks. Tatiana becomes entangled in her country's struggle for democracy, and her dream of a better life in Paris is soon challenged by hope for her country's future. Tatiana must make a choice, and there will be no turning back. This companion novel to National Book Award winner Gloria Whelan's breathtaking epics angel on the square, the impossible journey, and burying the sun offers a riveting portrait of a nation, and a young woman, on the brink of spectacular change.
Author Notes
Gloria Whelan was born on November 23, 1923 in Detroit, Michigan. She took a strong interest in reading early in life when she was bedridden for a year with rheumatic fever. She dictated stories to her sister who would then type them. She then went on to writing poetry and later editing her high school newspaper. She attended the University of Michigan and earned her B.S.degree and M.S.W. degree. She began working as a social worker in Minneapolis and Detroit. She soon became tired of Detroit's hectic pace and moved to a cabin in northern Michigan.This peace was disrupted by an oil company 's desire to drill on her property. Because she did not own the mineral rights, the drilling proceeded. This experience inspired Gloria Whelan to write her children's novel, A Clearing in the Forest in 1978, which was about a boy working on an oilrig. Gloria Whelan has written several works of fiction for children and adults, many set in rural Michigan. She has also written stories set in exotic places like China and India. She won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2000 for Homeless Bird - the story of a young woman in India abandoned by her mother-in-law.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Several new entries continue favorite sagas and series. Gloria Whelan continues her history of Russia, explored through the fictional characters first introduced in Angel in the Square, set in 1913 under Tsar Nikolai II (in a starred review, PW wrote, "Whelan shows both sides of the Russian revolution in a sympathetic light"). In The Turning, readers meet Tatiana, the granddaughter of Georgi, the narrator who faced Germany's WWII invasion of Russia in Burying the Sun. The story picks up just months before the August 1991 coup attempt that led to the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, as Tatiana, a dancer in the Kirov Ballet, decides whether to defect. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Gr. 5-8. Living in Leningrad with her parents and grandparents, Tanya tells her story in this, the fourth in a series of twentieth-century historical novels featuring members of the same family in different eras. Tanya's grandfather Georgi was the narrator in Burying the Sun 0 (2004), which took place during the siege of Leningrad in 1941. Fifty years later, Tanya's parents must work hard to put enough food on the table, but political discussion is plentiful in the household, as the Soviet Union is on the verge of enormous change. A young dancer with the Kirov Ballet, Tanya wonders if she will have the courage to defect when the company goes to Paris, as her friend urges her to do. Details of everyday life will help readers picture the settings, people, and events through Tanya's eyes as the story sweeps rapidly along to its inevitable conclusion. Though the young dancer's presence in the Moscow parliament building at the pivotal political moment is not convincing, readers will want to follow her personal struggle as it evolves throughout the book. --Carolyn Phelan Copyright 2006 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-In 1991, 17-year-old Tanya is encouraged by Vera, another member of the Kirov Ballet Corps, to defect with her when the company goes on tour to Paris. The teens come from very different backgrounds. Vera's family is rich because of her father's black-market dealings, while Tanya's family has sacrificed a lot to allow her to pursue her career. Vera dreams of escaping the dreariness of the Soviet Union, while her friend thinks of defection as a way to better her career opportunities. Tanya's personal turmoil and worries are mirrored in the political strife around her. Her grandfather has always been politically active, and there is great excitement as the struggle for power goes on between Gorbachev and Yeltsin. The author has successfully woven Russian history and culture into this story. The day-to-day rivalries and jealousies among the dancers at the ballet company are believable enough to hold readers' interest. There is also a hint of romance between Tanya and a talented artist who is almost caught up in some illegal art dealings to pay for the medicine his grandmother needs. Tanya is an appealing, thoughtful heroine whose political awareness and integrity will encourage readers to think about the importance of decisions and events in people's lives.-Carol Schene, Taunton Public Schools, MA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Tanya, 16 years old in 1991 and a principal dancer with Leningrad's Kirov Ballet, is both a witness to the events of a dramatic summer and a participant in Russia's fledgling steps toward democracy.Though the events of this story begin just after the Vilnius massacre in Lithuania, Tanya's focus is on the Ballet's upcoming visit to Paris, and on her own tentative plans to defect while there. Rising political tensions are felt in her family's daily discussions of events. The company's stay in Moscow, en route to Paris, gives Tanya an opportunity to convey important information from her grandfather (Georgi, the hero of Whelan's earlier Russian novels) to an official in the Kremlin. While there, she is caught up in the events of the August 19th attempted coup. Whelan deftly covers a lot of territory swiftly and a bit breathlessly, from a look at daily life in the late 20th-century USSR with its ubiquitous poverty and corruption, to a peek at momentous historical events (both Rostropovich and Yevtushenko make an appearance during the siege on the Kremlin) as nearly a century of Soviet hegemony and communism in Russia unravels. (Fiction. 10-14) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
The Turning Chapter One Escape The moment my friend Vera Chikov heard our Leningrad ballet troupe would be going to Paris in August to perform, Vera began to plot her escape from the Soviet Union. "Come with me, Tatiana," she begged. "Russia is dreary, like a picture painted all in gray and black. No excitement, nobody laughs, everyone is gloomy." At first I could not take Vera seriously, but she talked about defecting day and night, exploring the possibilities as if she were an empress turning over the diamonds in her jewelry box. Instead of frightening her, the danger of defecting only made her more determined. I couldn't help but be impressed by Vera's courage. After a while and just for the fun of it, I began to daydream about a life away from the Soviet Union. In the corner of our family apartment where I slept, I tacked up pictures of the river Seine and the Eiffel Tower and the Luxembourg Gardens, where you could sit by a little lake and read anything you wanted without worrying about someone reporting you to the KGB, the secret police. My favorite picture was of the Paris Opéra. I imagined myself dancing in that elegant building. Underneath the opera house was the grotto where the Phantom of the Opera was said to have lived. In the opera house museum you could see the ballet slippers of the great Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky and the crown Anna Pavlova, the most famous Russian ballerina of them all, wore when she danced Swan Lake . I didn't want to leave my family, but the ballet meant everything to me. For as long as I could remember, I had sacrificed my life to endless hours of practice. Yet hard as I worked, I wondered if I would ever find in Russia the opportunity to further my career that I could find with the ballet of the Paris Opéra, or an even greater dream, the New York City Ballet in America. What at first began as an idle daydream began to be a possibility. Vera told me of her plans: what she would take with her when she left Russia, and how, once she was in Paris, she would slip away and contact the authorities there, asking for asylum. It was hard not to be caught up in her excitement. We tried to guess what our chances would be of joining the Paris ballet. All these conversations were whispered. We knew what danger there would be in defecting. If we were caught, we would be thrown out of the ballet, perhaps arrested, certainly watched day and night. I was not sure I was willing to take the risk. Vera shrugged off the danger. "The first thing I will do in Paris," Vera announced, "is go to the Galeries Lafayette, the fancy department store, and buy lipstick that doesn't go on as if it were wax and a dozen pairs of those sexy French thong panties. Then I'm going to a restaurant and order a big goose liver and two kinds of soufflé for dessert." I laughed at Vera's gluttony. "You'll get fat and won't fit into the panties," I told her. Vera's whole family was as hungry for things as Vera was. Unlike my family, her family had money, lots of it. The Chikovs' apartment was ten times bigger than ours. Vera had a bedroom all to herself. There was a room just for eating in and a living room where no one had to sleep. There was a television set where Vera and I could see the things that went on in the world, though most of what was going on in 1991 seemed to be bad news: war in the Middle East; in Afghanistan a thousand people dead in an earthquake. In Leningrad, where we lived, it wasn't much better. Night after night a TV show, 600 Seconds , showed scenes of robberies and murders right in our own city. Crowded into the Chikovs' kitchen were a stove with four burners and a refrigerator and even a microwave oven. I loved to put a cup of water in the little oven's belly and watch as the water boiled up. It was magic. Vera, who was one of the most generous people in the world, would give me a packet of American chocolate to put into the boiling water, and I would drink the heavenly cocoa. The Chikovs were very rich, but no one was sure just why. They had a peephole in their apartment door so they could see who was knocking, and when I came to visit, I had to wait while they snapped open a dozen locks. Vera didn't walk to ballet rehearsals and performances but was taken and picked up in a car driven by a bodyguard. The car wasn't a cheap little Lada, or even a Volga, but a Mercedes from Germany. There were even rumors that the Chikovs' car was bulletproof. Vera's father was once high up in the army, but his money did not come from that, for most of the soldiers in Russia hardly earned enough to feed their families. Mr. Chikov was no longer in uniform. He wore a navy-blue jacket with gold buttons and gray flannel trousers and carried a real leather briefcase. The rumor among the dancers was that Mr. Chikov was part of the newly rich who made their money in the black market buying and selling scarce goods. The newspaper was full of scandals. Millions of rubles' worth of caviar had been secretly shipped out of Russia labeled as herring! I wondered if it was caviar that Vera's father sold or something more dangerous. For myself, I wouldn't go to Paris for fancy underwear. I told Vera, "After I sent money home, I'd buy toe shoes that don't have to be darned every five minutes." After our conversations about remaining in Paris, I began to see myself in Paris; at first it was only a harmless daydream, but bit by bit the daydream became more real. Vera had planted a seed, and what started as an impossible idea took root. The Turning . Copyright © by Gloria Whelan. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from The Turning by Gloria Whelan All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
