Starting From Here
Paula Saunders, Random House, 2025, $27.00/C$39.00/£22.56, hb, 281pp, 978-0593978306
The authentic and clear voice of Starting from Here declares Paula Saunders’ novel exceptional on page one. The story of a girl’s dream to become a ballerina in 1970s South Dakota may be unique, but the struggles along her journey are recognizable. René has a reluctant stage mother in Eve, who never stops working to support her daughter, but she does not do so without complaint. René must move to Phoenix and Denver in pursuit of the studies she can afford to train for her New York dream debut. To sustain these classes, she lives in awful rooms let by mostly awful people. René accepts these conditions and her aching loneliness in her pursuit of ballet. While bringing her dance to a high level and surviving an exhausting life alone, René yearns for grown-up love. She tries and fails here too, the missteps with and by the boys and men shown ring true.
Starting Here is a very much a story of mothers and daughters, and there is a scene where René sees her mother watching rehearsal and is overwhelmed, a moment of unexpected emotion experienced by the reader, too. As with most teen-aged girls and their mothers, the battle lines are drawn between René and Eve, but the bonds of love and connection are strong and tight. The novel ends in 1975 New York and it is the only section that does not ring entirely true. Aspects of modern New York unfortunately were overlaid on the 1975 version intended, to the point where Eve pays $17 for a sandwich. Even the fanciest Upper East Side place Eve might have ventured into, Maxwell’s Plum, charged $5.65 for the luncheon plat du jour. This avoidable error pulls the knowledgeable reader out of this wonderful narrative near its conclusion.
