Illusions of Camelot

Memoir from a dancer with the New York City Ballet. From an affluent family that lived in a mansion, sent their kids to private school, owned horses, belong to an exclusive Club, etc. Insider story about what it was like to grow up in those circumstances. A lot of it sounded pretty posh to me, but yes there were struggles and kids teasing each other and an argumentative, dysfuncational family and a father with alcoholism that only got more severe as the years went on. The author describes how his family was always a fan of the ballet, and took him to see performances at a young age, and he was so enthralled, turned to his parents and said: that’s what I want to do. And he did it. Starting at twelve. Taking the train into the city for ballet lessons after classes all through middle school, traveling with the company half of his high school years! Sounds like he had a natural talent, strength and flexibility- almost immediately singled out by instructors and mentors. I don’t know a lot about ballet (having only read a few fictional accounts of children in classes) so I was hoping for more, but feel like I just got the bare bones. All the ballet stuff was sketched over, or breezed through with technical terms I couldn’t follow, frequently mentioning big names, how he met certain people, how much he admired them- but not a lot of the details that get a reader to really sink into a story. Really more of the narrative was about his family life, travels, incidents and politics in his hometown. I did admire his family’s stance on certain things, and liked the stories from his childhood, but going into this book thinking it was mostly about the ballet, it came across as a disappointment.

Also a tad disjointed- it skips around quite a bit. More or less chronological, but then events fall out of order again. You’ve read all through his childhood and teen years into adult, and then suddenly the last few chapters tell about the pony he had as a kid, and how his sister got into competitive riding. I realized why when I read the acknowledgements at the end- seems like much of this book was originally written as short stories, which he then pieced together. So that makes sense to me now, but when I was reading it before knowing that, it kept throwing me off. Another thing that baffled me, was reading about how as a young man he first realized he was gay, about his first lover who became very ill, and another man he was with after that- and then suddenly at the end of the book it mentions his wife and children. What? I was very confused- there’s not even a brief sentence of explanation. Probably it’s too personal to be included, but I admit I was taken aback and can’t help wondering what changed. It’s the one thing that keeps turning over in my mind on finishing the book, and it wasn’t the most interesting part of his story.

I received my copy from the Early Reviewers program on LibraryThing, in exchange for an honest review.