The Ninja Reader

Various Positions is the story of a deeply misguided girl and her attempts to find a little meaning in life through sex.

If you just imagined that Georgia turns into a nymphomaniac, congratulations, you totally missed the point. Then again, so does she. So does the entire book. 

Fair warning: This review contains spoilers. Lots and lots of spoilers. I cannot discuss it without spoiling it. If that bothers anyone, then sorry - I want to explain properly why I rated it the way I did. 

Georgia is 14 years old when she passes the audition to enter a prestigious ballet academy. She's thrilled, of course, because ballet is the alpha and omega of her life. There are hints about some troubles with her family early on in the novel, and that she only feels complete when she dances. Things get even better when she gets singled out by her very strict instructor as promising, and he encourages her to be the best in what she does.

Roderick is a strange subversion of the hot mentor trope, in that he has absolutely no interest in sex and actually considers it as a ruining factor for the dancers. Throughout the novel, he is especially cruel towards those girls who "don't have their priorities straight", which is fine with Georgia... until she becomes curious about sex. From there on, things snowball into disaster.

Read the rest on The Book Lantern.