Dancer In The Wings by Lorna Hill

Dancer In The Wings by Lorna Hill

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The more I read of the authors I read, the more I become convinced that there is a fine line between ridiculous and genius. So close and yet sometimes, so very much one or the other. It is the problem, I think, of being so squarely located within a series and world that you, as the author, have created, and being unable to find your way out of it. The Drina books suffered from this towards the end, I think, because it was too far in. So did Harry Potter if I’m being frank; I ached for it to be edited so much more towards the end of the series, and yet there they were. Behemoths, character-locked, mythology wrapped islands. Maybe it’s a problem of series fiction, and not one of genre at all. Maybe that’s what series do: leave you wrapped up in a problem of your own making and you’re just left trying to find the way out.

And so to Lorna Hill, and this delightful yet inherently ridiculous affair. Annette Dancy (“dancey by name and dancey by nature” reader, I die) needs to get to Scotland. She has no money but a great idea. Inevitably, none of that matters because everything works out! As you always knew it would! This isn’t a spoiler! You knew it from the moment you read it!

There’s something comforting about Lorna Hill and I do love her, but this is essentially ‘dancer on a boat and then dancer in Scotland’ and she’s done it better elsewhere. Much better. Dancer In The Wings just feels comfortable; a book span out of air, easy as the sun rising in the East and setting in the West. And even in that comfortable ridiculousness, there are moments when it’s still perfect, albeit briefly, so very briefly, because Hill does write a bloody good dance scene. You root for Annette, even though she’s an idiot, and you root for dancing on a ship, even though it’s ridiculous, because Hill makes it work. It’s comfortable, comforting stuff, and sometimes that’s what’s needed. It’s not the highest of literature, nor will it last with you very long after it happens, but for a moment? It’s ideal.



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