REVIEW: Dancing Peel
Dancing Peel: Lorna Hill, Award Publications 2003
This is the first in the ‘Dancer’ series, and I daresay I’ll have to hunt down the next book now, instead of waiting for it to come my way. It’s a vibrant book, introducing us to Annette Dancy, a talented young dancer. Her home is the ‘Dancing Peel’ of a title, a Northumbrian Border fortress once, a vicarage more recently, its name a corruption of ‘Dancy Peel’.
She lives there with her sensible mother and her brother Max. While Annette is obsessed with the ballet, he has picked up Spanish dancing. They got their artisitic side from their father, who died when Annette was five, and both are obsessive, temperamental, although country children for all that. Annette is fourteen, but looks eleven. She behaves like eleven at the news that a new vicar is to come to the village, with a boy and a girl, replacing the deceased vicar who replaced their father. The problem is that he has a claim on Dancing Peel.
Fortunately, Mr MacCrimmon does not want to throw the Dancys out, and finds another living solution, but it means that his son Angus and niece Sheena will stay at the Peel awhile. At first, Annette is not best pleased, because she and Angus seem to be at cross-purposes all the time. When they first meet, she is a righteous fury, and they both make bad impressions on each other, although their better selves, specially Angus’s, peek through.
Annette is passionately opposed to fox hunting, Angus goes to meets for the riding, even though he’s not particularly keen on the kill. But he does care about his fine pony, while Annette, acting impetuously, more than once does not think of the horse’s well-being at all.
Hill gives quite an unvarnished portrait of Annette. Her dancing comes first, that is where her vanity lies, although it’s in the service of dancing rather than pride per se. Even her beloved mother or Max, who is equally obsessed by his dancing, come second, and although she grows to learn good things about Angus’s character, she childishly takes him and his more malicious cousin at face value, which causes conflicts and problems.
The Northumbrian location - a bus ride and a walk away from Newcastle, where the Dancys are educated - is a strong feature. (This reminded me of ‘The Lost Cup of Walla’ by Theodora Wilson Wilson, which I recently read but didn’t review here and which was vaguer and more slapdash about its setting of ‘the Northlands’ and thus less successful.) The flowers, the seasons and the dialect of the people who live there all appear and add specificity to the story.
It’s quite obvious that Angus - a Sebastian figure to Annette’s Veronica, he’s musical, but Scottish, and the influence of the Gaelic on his English adds charm to his dialogue - has fallen for Annette by the time he sees her dance, while she’s still a child, although growing up because of financial troubles. There’s also the fact that to dance ballet is everything to her. Hill is realistic about what the profession demands. Annette started dancing late, and is not advanced enough for the Wells - Hill makes this a separate series in a separate world to the Wells, it seems to me - but when Annette performs, she lives a role, and she has potential. The story ends with the promise of more, and yes, Hill is being coy talking of what the moon and stars know of Annette’s future in the closing lines. But because of all that came before, the drama and the shrewd details, I’d like to read it.
This entry was originally posted at https://feather-ghyll.dreamwidth.org/172049.html. Please comment wherever you prefer to.
This is the first in the ‘Dancer’ series, and I daresay I’ll have to hunt down the next book now, instead of waiting for it to come my way. It’s a vibrant book, introducing us to Annette Dancy, a talented young dancer. Her home is the ‘Dancing Peel’ of a title, a Northumbrian Border fortress once, a vicarage more recently, its name a corruption of ‘Dancy Peel’.
She lives there with her sensible mother and her brother Max. While Annette is obsessed with the ballet, he has picked up Spanish dancing. They got their artisitic side from their father, who died when Annette was five, and both are obsessive, temperamental, although country children for all that. Annette is fourteen, but looks eleven. She behaves like eleven at the news that a new vicar is to come to the village, with a boy and a girl, replacing the deceased vicar who replaced their father. The problem is that he has a claim on Dancing Peel.
Fortunately, Mr MacCrimmon does not want to throw the Dancys out, and finds another living solution, but it means that his son Angus and niece Sheena will stay at the Peel awhile. At first, Annette is not best pleased, because she and Angus seem to be at cross-purposes all the time. When they first meet, she is a righteous fury, and they both make bad impressions on each other, although their better selves, specially Angus’s, peek through.
Annette is passionately opposed to fox hunting, Angus goes to meets for the riding, even though he’s not particularly keen on the kill. But he does care about his fine pony, while Annette, acting impetuously, more than once does not think of the horse’s well-being at all.
Hill gives quite an unvarnished portrait of Annette. Her dancing comes first, that is where her vanity lies, although it’s in the service of dancing rather than pride per se. Even her beloved mother or Max, who is equally obsessed by his dancing, come second, and although she grows to learn good things about Angus’s character, she childishly takes him and his more malicious cousin at face value, which causes conflicts and problems.
The Northumbrian location - a bus ride and a walk away from Newcastle, where the Dancys are educated - is a strong feature. (This reminded me of ‘The Lost Cup of Walla’ by Theodora Wilson Wilson, which I recently read but didn’t review here and which was vaguer and more slapdash about its setting of ‘the Northlands’ and thus less successful.) The flowers, the seasons and the dialect of the people who live there all appear and add specificity to the story.
It’s quite obvious that Angus - a Sebastian figure to Annette’s Veronica, he’s musical, but Scottish, and the influence of the Gaelic on his English adds charm to his dialogue - has fallen for Annette by the time he sees her dance, while she’s still a child, although growing up because of financial troubles. There’s also the fact that to dance ballet is everything to her. Hill is realistic about what the profession demands. Annette started dancing late, and is not advanced enough for the Wells - Hill makes this a separate series in a separate world to the Wells, it seems to me - but when Annette performs, she lives a role, and she has potential. The story ends with the promise of more, and yes, Hill is being coy talking of what the moon and stars know of Annette’s future in the closing lines. But because of all that came before, the drama and the shrewd details, I’d like to read it.
This entry was originally posted at https://feather-ghyll.dreamwidth.org/172049.html. Please comment wherever you prefer to.