Various Positions

Nuanced, fresh, and gorgeously well-written, Martha Schabas’ extraordinary debut novel takes us inside the beauty and rigour of professional dance, and the young women striving to make it in that world. Shy and introverted, and trapped between the hyper-sexualised world of her teenaged friends and her dysfunctional family, Georgia is only at ease when she’s dancing. Fortunately, she’s an unusually talented and promising dancer.

When she is accepted into the notoriously exclusive Royal Ballet Academy—Canada’s preeminent dance school—Georgia thinks she has made the perfect escape. In ballet, she finds the exhilarating control and power she lacks elsewhere in her life: physical, emotional and, increasingly, sexual.

This dynamic is nowhere more obvious than in Georgia’s relationship with Artistic Director Roderick Allen. As Roderick singles her out as a star and subjects her to increasingly vicious training, Georgia obsesses about becoming his perfect student, disciplined and sexless. But a disturbing incident with a stranger on the subway, coupled with her dawning recognition of the truth of her parents’ unhappy marriage, causes her to radically reassess her ideas about physical boundaries—a reassessment that threatens both Roderick’s future at the academy and Georgia’s ambitions as a dancer.

Praise for Various Positions:

‘A debut novel so exquisite, its sentences so delicately perfect, its initial pages so immediately engrossing, that you must re-check the press materials to ensure you aren’t reading a fourth or fifth effort…. Schabas is a writer in full control of her craft.’

National Post (Canada)

‘Schabas’s dialogue is often extraordinarily expressive, compressed to a tight code for swirling inner worlds… You will want to gather Georgia into your arms and make it all better… A wonderful, courageous debut.’

The Globe and Mail (Canada)

‘If the movie Black Swan didn’t entirely put you off letting your teenage daughter take ballet classes then Various Positions will finish the job.’

Herald on Sunday (NZ)

‘There’s a coldness in the novel, a sense of characters not revealing all, that makes it rather intriguing for the reader.’

Good Reading

‘The reader becomes completely immersed in Georgia’s version of events as her obsession grows. Teenagers' confusion and self absorption are authentically conveyed and it is increasingly difficult to determine what is real and what is simply her overactive imagination. An enthralling and intense journey. ‘

Sunday Herald Sun

‘An enthralling and intense journey into the dark and disturbed world of a teenager.’

Sunday Telegraph

‘Ballerinas can look innocent but Schabas’s debut novel delves into the underbelly of the professional ballet world through the eyes of Georgia, who is also dealing with the breakdown of her parents' marriage, her own insecurities and a crush on her ballet teacher. Confronting and catchy.’

Newcastle Herald

‘The author’s formal education in ballet may have ended after childhood, but the details she has retained, both of the dance and of the emotions it provoked, are sharp as glass. The story contained in Various Positions is performed with grace and aplomb, and leaves the reader utterly fouetté. Let this be only the first of Schabas’ bravura turns.’

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