Having long since fled her homeland and approaching crotchety old age, renowned ballerina Nina Revskaya has decided to benefit the Boston Ballet Foundation by selling her jewel collection-including a striking amber bracelet-and-earrings set. Local professor Grigori owns a necklace that seems a perfect match-one more bit of evidence that he's somehow tied to Revskaya, though she angrily brushed him aside when they once met. Do the jewels really belong together, and what do they signify for Revskaya? There's the mystery at the heart of this entertaining debut novel, which carries us to the Soviet Union in its darkest days yet does not dwell there. Instead, the novel weaves between past and present to show how layers of misunderstanding led rising Bolshoi star Nina to an act of betrayal involving husband Viktor Elsin, a minor poet once translated by Grigori; childhood friend Vera, also a dancer; and Gersh, an out-of-favor composer. It's a personal tragedy discovered too late but hardly surprising in the environment of repression delicately articulated here. Verdict Affecting and deftly plotted, this is perfect for readers who want an absorbing story overlain with more serious reflection. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 4/15/10.]-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

As she nears 80, former Russian prima ballerina Nina Revskaya now pain-ridden and confined to a wheelchair in her Boston brownstone puts her jewelry up for auction, little realizing that the provenance of one of the pieces will uncover long-hidden secrets. Kalotay's narrative moves effortlessly between mid-twentieth-century Russia detailing Revskaya's rise to prominence as The Butterfly ; her passionate love for her husband, poet Viktor Elsin; and her defection to the West and contemporary Boston, where widowed academic Grigori Solodin, translator of Elsin's poetry, who feels a connection to Revskaya, is helped in his quest to identify his birth parents by auction house associate director Drew Brooks. Kalotay (Calamity and Other Stories, 2005) has created appealing, well-rounded characters in well-researched settings, notably in capturing the fear, deprivation, and rampant suspicion of the Stalin era and its effect on artists. Although the book's heft and jacket illustration suggest a tome, this is a briskly paced, fresh, and engaging first novel dealing with the pain of loss and the power of love.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2010 Booklist

Kalotay makes a powerful debut with a novel about a Soviet-era prima ballerina, now retired and living in Boston, who confronts her past as she puts up for auction the jewelry she took with her when she left her husband and defected. Nina "The Butterfly" Revskaya, 79, reveals little about the past to curious auction house representative Drew Brooks as he peruses her cache of exquisite jewelry. Nina likewise rebuffs inquiries from foreign language professor Grigori Solodin, who has translated the works of Nina's poet husband and who offers an additional item for auction: the amber necklace he inherited from the parents he never knew. In extended flashbacks, Nina recalls intimate moments and misunderstandings with her husband, happy and disturbing times with his Jewish composer best friend, and encounters with her own childhood friend. Meanwhile, Drew and Grigori delve into the jewelry's provenance, hoping to learn as much about the jewels as their own pasts. While the Soviet-era romance can lean too much on melodrama, Kalotay turns out a mostly entrancing story thanks to a skillful depiction of artistic life behind the Iron Curtain and intriguing glimpses into auction house operations. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Sweeping transgenerational novel, short-story writer Kalotay's (Calamity and Other Stories, 2005) first, of the Soviet era and its discontents.Nina Revskaya was one of the privileged ones in the old days; as a lead ballerina in the Bolshoi, she was allowed to travel, to mix with foreigners, to taste some of the better things in life. Her lover, the poet Viktor Elsin, was "subtle," that damning term of Doctor Zhivago, meaning suspect, though managing most of the time to slip past the censors. Her other friends in Stalinist Russia were less subtle, numbering a few figures, such as a sardonic dissident composer, who fairly screamed to disappear into the Gulag in that unforgiving time. But that is in the past, for Nina has been living in Boston for years, alone with her thoughts, practically alone except for a West Indian woman who comes to cook for her. "You must miss dancing," that woman says, to which Nina replies, "Every day I miss it. I miss the way it felt to dance." As the book opens, now in the rueful twilight of her life, a young art appraiser, Drew Brooks ("these American girls, going around with men's names," grumbles Nina), is helping Nina prepare her collection of amber and jewelry for sale, irreverently quizzing the exceedingly grumpy prima ballerina about the past. The door begins to open just a little when a piece of jewelry that completes a set arrives at her door. "It could be from anywhere," Nina tells a TV interviewer, for her jewelry, worth a fortune, is big news. In fact, that piece, a pendant, "Baltic amber with inclusions," is just part of a mystery out of which Nina's long-hidden past unfolds, and a story that is not always to her advantage. Kalotay develops a neat narrative of deception and betrayal that takes in great strands of literary and political history. If the narrative seems sometimes overly researched, it is a sign of the author's efforts to get everything right in a complex story that, in the end, boils down to the simplest of elements: love, fear, disappointment and loss.An auspicious first novel, elegantly written and without a false note.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.