![]() But Gray handles it beautifully - she doesn't insulate her readers from the cruelties of grief, but she's never exploitative and she never uses cheap pathos. The novel concludes with an ending so mind-bogglingly sad, it would have seemed unnecessary and unreal if it hadn't actually happened. ![]() She carried such a sullen power over her own body, the despotic ruler of a nation constantly on the brink of civil war." When Duncan finally makes it back to her Paris home, after visiting a friend in Tuscany, she has eaten her children's ashes she's emotionally battered, unstable and unpredictable. Elizabeth grows exasperated with her sister, whose stubbornness has always rankled her: "If anyone could make herself sick by willing it, it was Isadora. But it does little to calm her, and soon she takes ill, unable or unwilling to leave her bed. Duncan finds herself unable to handle her sudden loss, at one point thinking, "The keening scream spread swiftly from my body to the walls and floor to make a residence of sound, echoed through my empty core, my ribs a spider's web strung ragged across my spine, a sagging cradle for the mess of my broken heart."Īt Singer's insistence, Duncan embarks on what's meant to be a restorative trip to the Greek island of Corfu, accompanied by her sister Elizabeth, also a dance instructor. Unfortunately, she is mistaken."Īs the novel opens, Duncan is in shock, and her partner Paris Singer - son of sewing machine magnate Isaac, and father of one of Duncan's children - is left to arrange the children's funeral. She anticipates that an artistic revolution will emerge from that energy, and that she will stand at the forefront of an era devoted to the sublime. Gray sets the tone of Isadora early on, with a brief introduction that sets the scene, describing Duncan's charmed life just before the death of her children: "An energy builds around her, a feeling that fascinates her and informs her work. It's a stunning meditation on art and grief by one of America's most exciting young writers. She was either 49 or 50.ĭuncan's life was obviously a tragic one, and what might have been her most difficult year - the period between the deaths of her first two children in a car accident and the birth of her third - form the basis of Amelia Gray's breathtaking new novel, Isadora. ![]() In her autobiography, My Life, the legendary American dancer Isadora Duncan wrote, "The finest inheritance you can give to a child is to allow it to make its own way, completely on its own feet." She would never have the chance to give any kind of inheritance to her three children they all died before she was killed in a freak accident in 1927.
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