Three Muses

On a business trip to France, Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist-in-training John Curtin watches prima ballerina Katya Symanova perform and is enraptured. Returning to their homes in New York City, John and Katya cross paths and quickly develop an intimate relationship. As they become closer, both must confront their demons—John’s devastating childhood in a Nazi concentration camp, where he survived by singing for the kommandant, and Katya’s romantic entanglement with her manipulative, much older choreographer. Haunted by their former selves, they struggle to reconcile past and present. Unfortunately, Marie Hoffman’s performance of Toll’s debut novel may leave some listeners underwhelmed. Though she frequently uses slight accents as appropriate, her emotionally subdued delivery fails to convey the characters’ personalities. Additionally, secondary characters’ voices occasionally border on exaggeration, disrupting the listening experience. While Hoffman uses a gentle tone, clear pronunciation, and a slow, even pacing throughout, this approach detracts from the story’s emotionally poignant scenes, as it fails to capture their intensity.