Not to beat about the bush; Balancing Acts is the best book through which I've browsed and burrowed for a long time. It has that beguiling simplicity of style which lets the reader rummage innocently in its pages, until, by some invisible and subtle act of stealth, it reaches in to give the heart a quick twist. Thereafter, the pages turn themselves, oblivious of fingers.

The plot pits its protagonists quickly together. Widower Max, a circus veteran in his seventies, has a rumpus with the rules in a respectable residence for the elderly. But his real war is waged upon the happy memories of his marriage, which threaten to overwhelm him. He volunteers his acrobatic skills to a local school, where his energetic antics enliven the schoolkids, amongst whom is Alison. Alison, thirteen, is lonely and rebellious like Max, frustrated by her friends and family, whose humdrum aspirations she despises….

For Alison, Max is like 'a messenger in a play who bursts in with news of the outside world', and he unwittingly catapults her fantasies into the circus's whirling world. She besieges her unwilling idol. But Max is treading a different tightrope, and his grudging admission of Alison to his privacy at 'Pleasure Knolls' is only because of Lettie, an ageing former chorus-girl with whom he has an unforeseen romance at the home. From warm, generous Lettie he is learning the lessons of old age; he has little time to teach a gauche young girl the tricks of his trade.

Lynne Sharon Schwartz handles the clash of Max and Alison beautifully, with one thumbing her nose at the conventions of adolescence, the other snubbing a senility into which he seems expected to lapse. The suburban American setting might offer a weaker writer the option of easy caricature; the story might easily succumb to sentiment. Both temptations, however, are wonderfully shrugged aside in Balancing Acts, and the result is a novel of impressive charm and friendly intelligence.

It comes as no surprise to find Alison reading The Member of the Wedding, since she is herself a modern Frankie, just as Lynne Sharon Schwartz has the skill of a Carson McCullers. (p. 22)