Analyse af Abigail Ullmans novelle 'Warm-Ups'

Young athletes all around the world, in every country and every city, are working their hardest to achieve what they desire the most. An opportunity to get their name out to the industry of their sport in the early teenage years is the opportunity of a lifetime. Sweat, blood, and tears get shed every day for a chance like this. Some are more privileged than others and have parents who can hand out a stack of money for their kids to compete with the national teams, while others have to be noticed by their talent. This is exactly what the short story “Warm-Ups'' by Abigail Ullman, published in 2015, centers around. A 13-year-old teenager named Kira, from a port city in Russia gets the opportunity to go to America and perform on the balance beam with three other Russian gymnasts. The desperate decision to go to America leads to the trip not going as planned and ending with the competition being canceled, as well as other problems appearing.

The short story “Warm-Ups” is told by a limited first-person narrator from Kira’s point of view. Because of this, the readers have full access to Kira’s thoughts, which opens up a landscape of consideration and emotions, making the readers understand the feelings of a girl in the early teenage years, and also informing the readers about the situation they have been placed in. This also lets the readers know the short story partially takes place in a port city called Vladivostok in Russia, where Kira lives with her mother, father, and grandmother, while her sister is located in London. The setting changes as Kira gets the chance to go to America and leaves Russia with her coach, Zhukov, and three other teenage girls, who had have the chance to go to America.