Jessica Duchen doesn't shy away from her musical background in her debut novel (named after Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, a work inspired by a dream about a virgin sacrificed to propitiate a sun god). But although this and other musical factoids lift the story, they're not enough to carry the reader through the seemingly unending pages of family drama. Adam and Sasha are the parents of three: young twins and a teenage girl who, like her mother before she became a newspaper columnist, develops an obsession for ballet. As the couple's relationship begins to fray and third parties enter the scene, Liffy (short for Olivia) starts screaming silently for attention: she stops eating, or eats as little as possible while pretending otherwise. Apart from problems involving anorexia and breaches of trust, there's the man who won't commit (to Sasha's sister) and the teacher who may or may not be compromising himself morally (with Liffy's best friend). Perhaps it's that none of the characters is particularly endearing or that the plot slows to a trudge. It may also be that tragedy needs some levity - even if it's on a minor scale.