---
product_id: 103257347
title: "Off Balance: A Memoir Kindle Edition"
brand: "dominique moceanu"
price: "₪74"
currency: ILS
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.co.il/products/103257347-off-balance-a-memoir-kindle-edition
store_origin: IL
region: Israel
---

# Off Balance: A Memoir Kindle Edition

**Brand:** dominique moceanu
**Price:** ₪74
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Off Balance: A Memoir Kindle Edition by dominique moceanu
- **How much does it cost?** ₪74 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.co.il](https://www.desertcart.co.il/products/103257347-off-balance-a-memoir-kindle-edition)

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- dominique moceanu enthusiasts

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## Description

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Solid Memoir - Answers Questions for Fans and Makes People Think
  

*by J***E on Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2012*

A memoir is the story of a person's life and their experiences and no one should be entitled to review that.  Accordingly, this review focuses only on how the information is presented and whether the audience of potential buyers would take an interest in it.As fans of celebrities we pick up on a person during or after their major achievements.  In the case of Moceanu (for most) this would be 1996 when she and the U.S. Woman's team won a gold medal in the team competition for gymnastics.  She was just 14 years old.  I assumed it took a lot of hard work to get there, and that the path was not easy.  I also assumed that it was a childhood lost and replaced with the hard work and determination of an adult.  This book certainly confirms these theories.  I feel I can write this without it being a real spoiler for anyone.We (the public) see the glorious results and have some appreciation for how difficult it is to achieve the results, but no true understanding.  This memoir humanizes Moceanu's achievements and it does it in an incredibly well thought out and touching way.  For example, most fans knew her family was Romanian - but probably few considered what that truly meant.  It meant that Moceanu is a first generation American who came from a poor family of immigrants... a family which had a financially unsteady situation.  It may be hard enough to achieve greatness, but it is even harder living in a two-bedroom apartment with your parents, sister and grandparents.  Most great gymnasts tend to be on the small side, but have any fans considered what it is like to be the smallest person in your class selected last to play a sport in gym class, have a funny sounding name and come to school with food that is unlike your classmates' food at lunch time?  No one imagines the small tiny hardships that add up to a difficult life when they see a girl and a gold medal on a podium in front of the entire world.  This memoir helps you to relate to Moceanu as a human - a young girl who faced kids in school as cruel as the ones you went to school with, but she faced them with much more adversity than most of us did in our own lives.It is a poorly kept secret that elite child athletes often face abuse (which comes in multiple forms:  physical, mental, emotional).  Gymnastics seems to be particularly notorious for this.  What I appreciate about this memoir is that it reads like someone trying to tell a story as a way of explaining their life...  and not like someone who has an ax to grind.  Many memoirs are "grinding axes" in disguise, but fortunately this does not come off as one of them in my opinion.Moceanu does a great job reflecting on what was great in her childhood and what she appreciated about her life as well as noting things she has set out to change about her own children's childhood.  It also brings an additional remarkable component about her lost sister and how the discovery altered everything she knew and perceived about her family which, frankly, was already enough for ten lifetimes!If I had one criticism of the book it is the way in which the chronology was broken up to weave past and current together (i.e. the story of her lost sister).  It was awkward to follow and I think the reader's feeling of being disjointed outweighed what Moceanu was probably going for by doing it.  This is a small issue mentioned only because no product review should fail to mention "the negative".The story is remarkable and inspiring, there is no question of that.  It is told well and with great detail that takes a lot of courage to share with other human beings (let alone publish in a book).  You do feel that you are a better person for having understood the path someone else experienced in life and the challenges they faced and the lessons they learned.  You can not ask for more after reading a memoir.  Highly recommended.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Incredible story!
  

*by I***E on Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2017*

I have a lot of respect for Dominique Moceanu for her honestly in this book.  I've read it several times and am always appalled and disgusted by the brutal treatment she received at the hands of the Karolyis. I believe every word of what she says she endured.  She's come out of her experiences a pretty amazing woman and it sounds like she's found much happiness as an adult.  The part about finding her sister Jen is incredible as well!  The book is well written and I highly recommend it to any gymnastics fan or reader of memoirs!

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Riveting
  

*by T***S on Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2012*

Dominique Moceanu won an Olympic gold medal along with her Magnificent 7 teammates at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. She was only 14 years old, tiny (4 feet 4 inches tall!), cute and charismatic.Her life on and off the gym floor has been difficult. She had complicated relationships with her family and with Bela and Marta Karolyi, her official coaches during her champion years. Her parents were Romanian immigrants, although Dominique and her sister were born in the United States. While she loved her mother and sister, her relationship with her father was fraught with complications. He was domineering and abusive.The book opens when Dominique is an adult, and receives the biggest surprise of her life. Her parents had kept a secret from her and her sister for many years.Dominique is bitter about many things but she also gives praise where it is due. She actually adored her first coaches, but when it became apparent by the age of 10 that Dominique was exceptionally talented - Olympic material - her father whisked her away to the Karolyi ranch in Texas. She was not at all prepared for the transition. She was shy and was used to a positive environment in the gym, but in Texas she was hopelessly confused and upset with what went on. For example, her favorite coach at the gym simply disappeared (he was fired) and no one ever mentioned him again.Much has been made of the fact that she was miserable with the Karolyis. Actually, in this book she seems to be more mystified by their actions. After the Olympics they seemed to want to have nothing to do with her. Even though she won a gold medal, she didn't win any individual medals and apparently that was considered a failure. Even her parents were discouraged from praising her too much.Moceanu's body changed rapidly after Atlanta but she still kept pursuing gymnastics - because she loved it.She had made quite a lot of money from touring in gymnastics shows after the Olympics, which her father had put into building a huge gymnasium. Moceanu famously ran away from home as a teenager and tried to get her legal emancipation from her family. What happened after that is riveting reading.Quite frankly, I was surprised by this book. If you read enough gymnastics message boards as I do, you would think that Dominique Moceanu was the devil, or is at the very least lying in the gutter with a needle in her arm. Many people find her hopelessly bitter because she has voiced her unhappiness in how she was treated many times. Perhaps because she was so cute and spunky while performing, some gym fans just refuse to accept how difficult her life really was?Even before her book was released it was being compared to Jen Sey's notorious gymnastics memoir, "Chalked Up," about that author's bitter experiences in gymnastics. But Moceanu's book is well-written by her "co-authors" Paul and Teri Williams. The book was far more detailed than I expected, although it does slide over some of the things that happened in her career after 1996, spending more time on the events that happened in Moceanu's personal life.Moceanu is currently happy and productive, married to a gymnast-turned-physician, and they have two young children. Her children are involved with gymnastics, since she always loved the sport, but not the outside pressures of being involved with elite gymnastics.

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*Product available on Desertcart Israel*
*Store origin: IL*
*Last updated: 2026-03-10*