Three Muses, Martha Anne Toll
Three Muses, Martha Anne Toll
4 Rating(s)
List: $18.99 | Sale: $13.29
Club: $9.49

Three Muses

Author: Martha Anne Toll

Narrator: Marie Hoffman

Unabridged: 8 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/20/2022


Synopsis

Three Muses is a love story that enthralls; a tale of Holocaust survival venturing through memory, trauma, and identity while raising the curtain on the unforgiving discipline of ballet.

"...A meditation on history, music, the catastrophic inheritances of the Holocaust, and the so common, painful hiddenness of hope itself, THREE MUSES captivates the reader from the first page to the last." -Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize winning author of TINKERS and ENON

In post-WWII New York, John Curtin suffers lasting damage from having been forced to sing for the concentration camp kommandant who murdered his family. John trains to be a psychiatrist, struggling to wrest his life from his terror of music and his past. Katya Symanova climbs the arduous path to Prima Ballerina of the New York State Ballet, becoming enmeshed in an abusive relationship with her choreographer, who makes Katya a star but controls her life. When John receives a ticket to attend a ballet featuring Katya Symanova, a spell is cast. As John and Katya follow circuitous paths to one another, fear and promise rise in equal measure. Three muses—Song, Discipline, and Memory—weave their way through love and loss, heartbreak and triumph, to leave readers of this prize-winning debut breathless.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Angela M on February 28, 2022

A Holocaust survivor, a ballerina, a love story. Their alternating stories moving back and forth in time to their traumatic childhoods and as they grow up shedding light on the paths they’ve taken shaped by the memories that haunt them. A beautifully told story of loss and grief and the gifts people......more

Goodreads review by Blaine on April 30, 2023

This is a book that really surprised me. Not being a fan of the ballet I had some reservations about a book that appeared to be heavy on that art form. Instead author Martha Anne Toll has given us a very good psychological novel about 2 individual who have changed their names, who meet by happenstan......more

Goodreads review by Martha on July 14, 2022

I spent 10 years writing this book. It was a true labor of love, so I hope it’s ok that I rated it! I hope you’ll enjoy it! I’m so excited that Three Muses earned a starred review on Kirkus. [URL not allowed]-re... Super excited that Three Muses made The Millions' most anticipated sec......more

Goodreads review by Amy on December 06, 2023

Debut novel spanning the 1940's to the 1970's. It was painful, raw, and haunting. John/Janko's past as a child in the holocaust was terrifying. He later becomes a psychiatrist, and is reliving his own trauma as part of his training. During this time, he is given a ticket to the ballet, and feels an......more

Goodreads review by Pancha on February 27, 2022

Thank you, NetGalley for giving me the chance to discover this story. Three Muses follows two characters with only one thing in common, music. Yet they couldn't have more different perspectives about it. The year is 1963 and each of them faces their past in New York. Katherine is a ballerina, the on......more