Three Muses

July 11, 2022
Loss, memory, and romance are explored in Toll’s bittersweet debut. In 1944, Janko Stein is an 11-year-old German Jewish death camp inmate who is spared because of his beautiful singing voice. That same year, in New York City, seven-year-old Katherine Sillman receives ballet lessons as a consolation after the death of her mother and later grows up to become an acclaimed prima ballerina, thanks to her Svengali-like choreographer, Boris Yanakov, who is also her lover. Janko, adopted by a New York City family after the war and renamed John Curtin, goes on to a psychiatric residency. In 1963, John and Katherine, now rechristened Katya Symanova, meet in Paris after John becomes entranced by her performance in Yanakov’s Three Muses. Back in New York, the two of them begin a heated love affair, but will they ultimately be separated by John’s survivor’s guilt and Katya’s allegiance to Yanakov? Toll is savvy in exploring how love can flourish in the face of trauma, but her theme is undercut by clichéd situations and dialogue (“You were born to dance”). Despite the pungent realism of the death camp setting and the vibrant depiction of the New York ballet scene, John and Katya feel a bit too wooden, with every emotion spelled out. It’s an ambitious if uneven effort.

Starred review from August 1, 2022
A dancer and a doctor embark on a tentative romance in 1960s New York. The parallels between Katya Symanova and John Curtin, the two central characters in this empathetic novel, are clear from its early pages. Both have dedicated themselves to their work--Katya to her achievements as a dancer, John to his career as a psychiatrist. Both have experienced a renaming process of sorts. In John's case, that happened when he traveled to the United States as a young man after having survived the Holocaust; for Katya, it was for professional reasons. Their paths first cross in Paris; John sees Katya dance and is immediately captivated by her. He sees her again in New York, where they live, and experiences a kind of revelation: "He was awash in a mysterious sensation: she was a song being born." Eventually, they embark on a relationship. Complicating matters is Katya's ongoing personal and professional relationship with the choreographer with whom she's worked since her teens--and yes, at least one supporting character comments on the troubles inherent to this dynamic. But for Katya, the importance of art is paramount: "Mr. Yanakov was her means to dance. She needed dance in order to be. How could she imagine that she could date John with the insouciance of an ingenue?" As John grapples with his own experience of childhood trauma, Toll creates a sense of mystery as to whether the bond between these two people will solidify or end in a rupture--and throughout, these flawed characters facing complex decisions are given their due. An affecting chamber piece with plenty to say about art, trauma, and healing.

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