A woman living alone in a coastal Sussex town in 1998 plants a copper beech sapling at 3 a.m. on a dark, cold night. Why?
A ballet dancer in 1960s East Germany is oppressed, longs for escaping with his little daughter but not his wife. Why? Will he make it?
In 2022 Karsten von Stein, widower and principal of the Royal Ballet, with two young children, meets Ivone Benjamim, a Portuguese, newly-arrived principal dancer. They discover a magical chemistry when dancing and soon it transfers to their private lives.
Against the background of ballet and its dancers, a woman called Grace tells her story from a rehab centre. Obsessive, delusional she begins believing Ivone robbed her of the man of her dreams—Karsten. And then a skeleton is found in a garden...What connects all these people and their stories?
You’ll be the audience facing the stage of this balletic novel.
My review...
Sometimes we become fixated on something and we have to have
it or them. In Grace’s case it was Karsten, the graceful beautiful danseur or
male ballet dancer. Sometimes we also find out things about our loved ones we
never ever thought possible. That is what Amadeus, also a talented danseur, has
had to endure.
The above characters are decades apart. They have quite
different lives and yet they also share much in common. I must say, the
switching from one decade and character to another chapter after chapter is not
always my favorite format. M G da Mota seems to manage these two stories quite
well as they twist and turn and merge. That’s not an easy thing for an author
to do.
I have read another of this author’s books and there can be
no question her main talent is character development. The reason she doesn’t
lose her reader with her decade swings is because she makes us know exactly who
is who, so to speak. The characters are so well-defined you know where you are,
which story you are in. That along with a story of intrigue, mystery, love, and
beautiful ballet keeps you reading right to the end. 5 stars in my book for M G
da Mota
After a moment I decided in favour of the bus. Taxis were
too expensive. Just then I heard the roar of an engine and instinctively stepped
back. A red Ducati parked only a few metres away on the side road. I knew about
motorbikes. My brother liked them. He owned an Aprilia and took it to the
tracks in Portugal much to his wife’s chagrin and my little niece’s excitement.
I recognise and appreciate a terrific motorbike when I see one.
Admiring the Ducati from a distance I watched the biker who dismounted with the elegance of a model about to shoot a fashion video. He pulled off his helmet, attached it to the steering, next to a spare already there and walked into the station. I followed him with my eyes. His walk. As if floating. It was him. Last month’s stranger on the Strand. It could only be him. The way he moved was unmistakable. So light. So elastic. Graceful. Not effeminate. Stylish. Noble. With class. He wore black jeans, laced ankle boots, a pilot’s leather jacket and a black and red wool scarf around his neck. I thought he looked like a prince, or at least what one imagined a prince should look like—tall, athletic and handsome.
about M G da Mota...
M G da Mota is Margarida Mota-Bull’s pen name for fiction. She is a Portuguese-British novelist with a love for classical music, ballet and opera. Under her real name she also writes reviews of live concerts, CDs, DVDs and books for two classical music magazines on the web: MusicWeb International and Seen and Heard International. She is a member of the UK Society of Authors, speaks four languages and lives in Sussex with her husband. Her website, called flowingprose.com, contains photos and information.
Website:https://www.flowingprose.com/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/m.g.da.mota
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/margarida-mota-bull/
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/mgdamota/
Hi Out of Town. I'm M G da Mota, author of Arabesque. Thank you so much for reading my book and posting such a wonderful review..
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed it.
DeleteThank you so much for reading and reviewing.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a good read.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a really good read.
ReplyDeleteThis looks like an awesome read. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteWhich character in this book surprised you the most while you were writing?
ReplyDeleteHi Tracie M, well there's a question no one ever asked me before. I don't know if any of my characters surprised me while I was writing. I tend to plan the characters in detail so I don't think I was ever surprised with the way one has turned out. So, I wasn't surprised with any but I was very happy with the end product. I accomplished what I set out to do with this novel (a tribute to ballet among other things) and what I wanted the characters to be, especially Karsten, Amadeus, Grete and Grace.
Delete