While I’ve grown less interested in this historical fiction style I think this is a great book in that genre. Very interesting life and interesting insights into that time period.

This historical fiction caught my attention, as I wanted to know more about Isadora Duncan, the founder of Modern Dance. The characters, especially Isadora, were eccentric and selfish, as was likely true to their true selves. Mixed with a terrible tragedy of Isadora's children, I still found myself with difficulty connecting to the characters and their relationships. Thank you NetGalley for the e-reader for review. All opinions are my own.

I'm a fan of Amelia Gray's style of writing. Threats blew my mind, so I was excited to get her take on the life and fictionalized times of Isadora Duncan.

This is a story full of immense sadness and grief. Told through the eyes of a rotating cast of characters, the reader follows Isadora's life after the tragic drowning her two of her children.

Gray's writing style isn't for everyone. This isn't a book that recounts the highlights of Duncan's life and her part in the founding of modern dance. We are taken inside the world of pain and suffering, something Gray writes incredibly well.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and Amelia Gray (I love you!) for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I received this book through Netgalley and its publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The book begins with the tragic death of Isadora’s two children, Dierdre and Patrick. The event of their death took almost the first 25% of the book. It was almost humorous how the funeral guests stayed at the grieving family’s home day and night. Thereafter, the book focuses on Isadora and various family members including the children’s fathers. The coping challenges Isadora faces feels realistic such as alcohol abuse and eating the children’s ashes.

However, the book bounces between past and current times; I found the book hard to follow. Isadora and her sister, Elizabeth, are involved in the dance industry. I simply had a hard time tying the various threads together. It seemed to ramble.

This book would be a 1 star if it wasn’t for the details of the tragic death. Sadly, that kept your interest. After that, it was a challenge to get through. Skip it…

Isadora Duncan was, in her own peculiar way, one of the most influential personalities of the 20th century. Not only did she usher in a new conception of dance, but she embodied the turn-of-the-century ideal of turning life itself into art. Her personal life was at least as theatrical as her performances, and much more tragic. "Isadora" takes one of the most tragic moments of her personal life, the deaths of her children, and turns it into a short but complex novel, in which Isadora and her family members all relate--or fail to relate--to each other and to what has happened to them.

I have had a bit of an obsession with Isadora Duncan ever since seeing a modern dance piece about her and Sergei Esenin, the Russian poet with whom she had a tempestuous, and probably abusive, relationship upon her "defection," as it were, to the newly formed USSR, but I was less familiar with this portion of her biography, half a decade earlier, when she was living and working in France, and I knew next to nothing about her other family. "Isadora" takes a year in Isadora's life, 1913-14, and recreates it as letters, musings, and narratives. Isadora herself speaks in the first person, while the other characters all appear in the third person, except when they are writing to other characters offstage, and thus write in the first person...the structure of the novel is, as can be seen, multifaceted and fragmented, with sudden scene shifts, changes in point of view, and jumps in time and space. Like Isadora's own art, this is not a work for the lazy, but demands the reader's attention. Not that it is intentionally opaque--in fact, the language is clear and strong, and the separates vignettes are all compact and easy to follow--but it gives a picture of a personality and a family in the process of disintegration under pressure. "Isadora" is unquestionably literary fiction, but of a whimsical, strangely lighthearted sort, rather like Isadora herself.

This is also historical fiction, and shows a wealth of period detail, but it is used with a light hand. The events, the clothes, the food, the modes of transport, the philosophical ideas--everything is integrated into the text naturally, giving the impression of a work that really was written just in the pre-Great War period, when many European thinkers and artists believed that the world was standing on the edge of a new era. We modern readers know that they were right, just not in quite the way they imagined: the aristocratic society that Isadora stood on the fringes of in 1913 was indeed about to be washed away, but in tides of blood, not artistic ecstasy. The dark fate of the world, and of Isadora personally, is hinted at throughout the novel, beginning with the opening description of dogs getting tangled up in their leashes, and ending with Isadora's sister giving her an extra-long scarf as a gift. The book captures the decadence, the grandiosity, and the tragedy of pre-Great War Europe with precision, making it a pleasure to read for anyone interested in what in Russian is known as the Silver Age, and in one of that era's most flamboyant personalities.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a review copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

Isadora Duncan was on the cutting edge, taking on traditional ballet and changing it into her own inimitable style. This book, unfortunately, does not really touch on Isadora's dance; it focuses on the effects of the death of Isadora's young children. Although gritty and real, this is disappointing in that the plot is underdeveloped and scattered. Only my opinion.

Gray has an unusual writing style - very poetic and rather mystical. It wasn't at all what I expected the novel would be.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this advance copy, however, the writing style and I don't seem to mesh. In essence I am struggling and have decided not to review.

Thanks Farrar, Straus and Giroux and netgalley for this ARC.

Never before have I read about Isadora with so much empathy, gritty truths, and honest feelings. She was a amazing woman who lived thru events that could kill anyone's spirit. A maverick before her time.

Pub. Date: May 23, 2017
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

In this unusual historical fiction, we meet Isadora Duncan (1878-1927). She was a controversial and successful American dancer who performed throughout Europe. Breaking with conventional ballet, she spearheaded a cutting-edge technique which accentuated a natural and free-flowing style over traditional inflexible ballet. Today she is known as the “Mother of Modern Dance.” Through her point of view the author, Amelia Gray, lets us know that in Duncan’s professional and private lives, she disregarded convention. Both of her children were born out of wedlock by different men. On stage, she was barefoot wearing scarves inspired by Greek imagery that peeked at her breasts, which sometimes resulted in banned performances. It was suggested that she was bisexual. This woman was way ahead of her time. She was bohemian before there was even the expression bohemian. (Think of the artists Frida Kahlo). I was hoping Gray would focus her novel on the notorious dancer who lived and loved without boundaries. However Gray did not. The novel only concentrates on the aftermath of her children’s death. In 1913 Paris, her children and their Nanny drowned when their runaway car went into the Seine.

When I began this book I wasn’t aware that the author’s formatting was different than any other historical fiction that I have read. Each chapter starts off with a concise heading that clarifies what we are about to read. Then after the heading, each chapter reads like a disturbing stream of consciousness narration. I confess I was often confused. Gray’s writing made me feel as if I were having a particularly intense bad dream. And, I believe that was her goal. I have never read Gray’s short story “Museum of the Weird” but I have the feeling that “weird” may be her style. Yet for myself, while reading “Isadora,” I often I felt as though I was perusing a sonnet, or a poem that I couldn’t quite grasp. Leaving me feeling disappointed because the words sounded splendid, possibly brilliant, although I just didn’t get most of it. (Because of this, I now intend to watch the film “The Loves of Isadora” with Vanessa Redgrave playing Isadora). However, Gray did a great job in helping me understand that Duncan grieved as she lived, full of melodrama and spinning out of control (like the car that took her children’s lives) bordering on the edge of insanity. I will not tell you what she did with her children’s ashes, but be prepared to be shocked.

In this story, there were narrators other than the protagonist. There were also observers written in the third person. (I think Junot Díaz is the master of this kind of hybrid style of writing). You will need to be on your toes to follow the quick changes. Still, Gray does manage to pull it off. One voice was her sister Elizabeth who had a leg limp not allowing her to dance. Instead, she ran the dancing schools her sister founded. Elizabeth was totally reliant on Isadora and loathed her for that reality. She appeared to be the level headed sister until you catch on that her supposedly great loves were merely her friends, and the romances were actually all in her imagination. We also get a good glimpse on Duncan’s grief-induced turmoil in her letters to the father of one of her children. In these letters, Isadora’s sentences fringe on insanity. Paris Singer, the heir to the Singer sewing machine empire, was the father of her other child. Duncan was living with him at the time of the car accident. From Singer’s voice, he was the brains and she was the temperamental artist. Duncan would have disagreed, but it may have been true as he was influential in her many triumphs. These different viewpoints enhance the story of a dazzling self-destructive dancer who found fame on the brink of World War I. Shades of the coming war were only hinted at in this tale. The focus was all on Duncan’s anguish. Personally, I would have enjoyed reading about the historical moments that took place during her lifetime. As I mentioned, I honestly only comprehended sections of the book due to the dysphoria-like writing style, which I always have trouble understanding. But if you enjoy that genre, and you can handle absurdism in a historical fiction then this book is for you.

I just couldn't read this poorly done e-book. It was too distracting. I'm sure the story was much better.

Thank You Net Galley for the free ARC.

I was hoping this would be about Isadora Duncan and dance. It is more about the aftermath of Isadora's childrens' death in a sort of flow of conscience setting.

Unfortunately, I really hated the formatting - hope that's not meant to be that way in the final version. The story gave me very little. Sorry!