Marie’s Nutcracker by Margaret Marie Klenzing is a fun and refreshingly honest novel about the hardship that ambitious ballet dancers must face in their pursuit of perfection. Set in the snowy Northeast, this beautifully written novel will charm readers with its genuine and gentle prose and enchanting wintry landscape.
Marie is a teenager for whom dancing is her whole life, and she’s set to participate in the annual production of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” run by her town’s dance studio at Christmastime. As the title beautifully encapsulates, this production of “The Nutcracker” is more than a simple show to Marie, but it is a personal, intimate journey that brings her to life-changing realizations about love, passion, perfection, and happiness.
Marie is not a dancer like the others – for a start, she is Barbara’s daughter, the dance school’s headmaster. She often feels that her mother, a former ballet star, criticizes her more harshly than her classmates for her technique, which really doesn’t help with her insecurity. She asks herself the same questions as everyone else – Am I good enough? Will I ever make it? Are my classmates better than me? But she never allows competition to dent the pure joy that she feels when she dances.
In her mother’s Nutcracker this year she will be the understudy of her direct competitor in class, Jasmine, a smug girl her age who often uses her talent to discourage and bully others. Jasmine will interpret the protagonist Clara and dance with the gorgeous and super-talented Peter, a rising star in the ballet world. Parallel to the theatre production, Barbara has made a deal for her studios to be used to film a modern “Nutcracker” production. While Jasmine thinks it beneath her, Peter and Marie decide to participate, which gives them the opportunity to dance together and ultimately grow closer.
Klenzig’s novel is written in easy-flowing and light prose, without shying away from difficult topics, as Klenzing writes with great candor about the dark side of competitive dancing, in which unfortunate issues such as self-hatred, body dysmorphia, and serious eating disorders are all too common. With delicacy, the author also unpacks the difficult relationship between Marie and her mother, where Marie blames herself for her mother quitting the big stage, exploring the dread that professional dancers inevitably face about aging and no longer being able to dance, which the author skilfully weaves into the story alongside Marie’s own ambitions.
Though the book deals with vital and sometimes painful issues, Klenzig has a light touch overall, and the book is most of all a celebration of dance and self-expression, guiding readers to reflect on their own passions and ambitions, while also asking what it means to be happy and satisfied. In the competitive world of ballet, the pursuit of perfection is an intimate and haunting goal, one that can keep you up at night. But is it even possible, or desirable, to be perfect?
All told, Marie’s Nutcracker is a powerful and inspiring story that surprises with its complexity and sincerity. Punctuated by a clear love for Tchaikovsky’s iconic work, it is a moving ode to music, dance, and the holidays, which will appeal to a wide range of readers.
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