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An eleven year old girl leaves her hometown in southern Argentina, to enter the ballet school of the Teatro Colón. Her mother accompanies her and takes with her the pointe shoes of the ballerina she wanted to be.
They move into a two central, impersonal rooms, which they can't call home, and they adapt to the home, and they adapt to the demands of their new life. Together they develop a "porteño personality" and adapt to the routine of the ballet, which presents itself as a machine that forbids the development of the body, the desire, the feelings and any sensation other than perfection.
This is an enchanting novel, which, perhaps unintentionally, is also an  intimate story about the last thi
rty years of the country's most important theatre in the country and one of the most beautiful in the world.

Tender and intense, the voice of the protagonist of Ballerinas Don't Speak has the skill to hypnotise the most unsuspecting reader.

"Florencia Werchowsky's narrative skill lies not only in that withdrawn, shy, almost self-conscious gaze, which she once again masterfully composes, but also in the way she uses it to draw an extremely stinging social portrait and to launch a political critique that is as singular as it is powerful."

Martín Kohan

BALLERINAS DON'T SPEAK, published by Reservoir Books in 2017 
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© 2019 by Florencia Werchowsky.

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