My life as a health care aide imposter began accidentally on a clear bright morning in April, at the Nashaway Valley Home Health Care Associates on lower Main Street, in a gray and derelict part of town. The woman who cleaned the Nashway was my neighbor; she lived in my building, across the hall.

Buy in Maine:

    “Light and lovely, Cooney’s third novel is about the way a superb ballet teacher--indomitable, aging Irene Kamsky--touches the lives of her students and alters her community...A valentine to the transformative power of art.” Publishers Weekly

    “Who says all ballerinas must be beautiful and young? Ellen Cooney tells a story about dance and its restorative powers. Irene Kamsky is an elderly former ballerina suffering from orthopedic problems who earns her living teaching ballet. When her beloved protegee leaves her, a heartbroken Kamsky starts a class for teenaged boys (some of whom are real troublemakers). As the boys learn to love ballet, Kamsky’s passion for art and creativity is rekindled...Feisty, eccentric, and independent, Kamsky is an inspiring protagonist.” Library Journal

    “In her third novel, Ellen Cooney tells a story about the creative process, and how art can and must happen anywhere and everywhere, including a small mill town. The story of Mrs. Kamsky is the story of the independent voice and the creative spirit. This enchanting novel about the artistic drive to create is narrated by the central character’s closest friends, her loving and demanding students, and her inquisitive neighbors. With prose that itself is a dance, The Old Ballerina is about teaching and learning, the individual and the community, and the healing power of the arts.” From the jacket

    “For those of us who are devotees of The New Yorker style, The Old Ballerina will be easy going...Ellen Cooney opens the worlds of ballet, the ballerina, and indeed the performing arts themselves, to a level of symbolic interpretation that gives free reign to the reader’s imagination. The prose is lean, sliced into parcels of obscure lives, each one adding a new dimension.” Multicultural Education

    “I picked this up at the library on a whim and was shocked to find myself so moved by her writing and her characters that I couldn’t read it in public. I kept crying on the subway!” goodreads.com