“Can I tempt you to a foxtrot, Mrs. Hetherington?”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage (AUG 5, 2010)

There’s a good chance that the title of Salley Vickers’ book Dancing Backwards refers to a quote once made about Ginger Rogers: “Remember Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.” The quote implies that females have a harder role in life, and that certainly fits widow Violet Hetherington–a talented woman who gave up writing poetry years earlier.

Dancing Backwards begins with Violet, whose much-older husband Ted died about a year earlier, about to board a cruise ship from Britain to New York. She’s been encouraged to take the cruise by her two grown sons, and once in New York, she plans to reunite with Edwin, an old friend from university days. The early parts of the novel are very strong as Vickers creates an energetic cast of characters–a motley assortment of passengers–including young marrieds, unhappily married couples, mis-matched couples and some overly enthusiastic crew members.

Violet, as one of the few single passengers, feels somewhat out of place. While she’d be quite content to be left alone to think in peace, everyone seems determined that she should have a good time. Renato, her room steward, “a ballroom dance devotee” constantly hustles her up on deck, and she finds herself drifting towards dance lessons simply to pacify the concerns that she might be lonely or bored. Evenings spent with her fellow diners are a delicate blend of polite conversation mingled with the desire to avoid too much intimacy.

Life on a cruise ship is portrayed somewhat negatively. The passengers are “managed” more than anything else, and the descriptions of cruise life and the passengers desire to extract their ‘money’s worth’ are some of the best in the book:

“She was not so sure when, a little later, washed and dressed, she went down to breakfast. A kind of frenzy had set in. Cereals of all kinds were available: corn flakes, bran flakes, Rice Krispies, Shredded Wheat, Weetabix, Coco Pops, Fru-grains, muesli, together with stewed prunes, apricots, green figs, sliced cheeses, ham, salami, smoked salmon, as well as bacon, sausage, black pudding, kippers, haddock, eggs cooked to order, mushrooms, tomatoes, pancakes, porridge, waffles and every conceivable variety of bread, muffins and toast. Besides there were jams, honey marmalade, Marmite and peanut butter (with a prominent health and safety warning about possible allergies). Lest this were not enough there were plates of fresh pineapple, cantaloupe, watermelon, grapefruit, and piles of apples, pears, oranges, grapes, strawberries, blueberries, mango, kiwi fruit, guava, passion fruit and bunches of bananas.

Although the food was continually being replenished by teams of attentive waiting staff (and no passenger was left from 5 a.m. , ‘Dawn Snack’, till midnight, ‘Bedtime cookies and cocoa’, for more than fifteen minutes without ready supplies), a fever of impatience had overtaken the line of passengers as Vi queued for a bowl of muesli.”

As the cruise ship sails towards New York, Violet is alone with her memories, and her past life gradually and gently unfolds–university days, her friendship with fellow poet Edwin, and two marriages. In between Violet’s moments of reminiscence, she establishes a few tentative relationships with fellow passengers and also with crew members. Through these cruise ship relationships, it becomes clear that Violet’s past and her present are connected. Weakness and a lack of inner certainty led to Violet making some horrible mistakes in her youth, and she still has a tendency to want to please everyone–even though this may come at a personal cost. The idea that people don’t fundamentally change–although they may mature–is also seen through Violet’s relationship with her adventurous, irrepressible friend Annie.

Dancing Backwards also has its weak moments. There’s a very silly passage about Violet having “pirate blood” in her veins, and another paragraph about crew member Boris whose family owned “vast tracks of woodlands where wolves had loped. In the family annals it was alleged that on nights when the moon was full an ancestor of Boris’s had loped alongside the wolves.” At that point, I wondered if Boris was going to turn into a werewolf–what with all the loping around and whatnot. These sorts of inclusions drag the book over to romantic territory, and there’s the sense that the novel is either trying very hard to be something it isn’t or that it could be better. Not without its charming moments and saved from being too saccharine by Violet’s sometimes bitter memories, Dancing Backwards will no doubt appeal to those readers who want a little escapism laced with hope and kindness.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 2 readers
PUBLISHER:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1 edition (August 3, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Salley Vickers Wikipedia page on Salley Vickers
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read or review of The Other Side of You Another widow on holiday: The Lovers by Vendela Vida

Bibliography:

• Miss Garnet’s Angel (2000)
• Instances of Number 3 (2001)
• Mr. Golightly’s Holiday (2003)
• The Other Side of You (2005; 2007 in US)
• Where Three Roads Meet (2006; 2008 in US)
• Dancing Backwards (2009; 2010 in US)
• The Cleaner of Chartres (June 2013 in US)

“Now, as she started down the length of the promenade, hope swelled in Yvonne’s chest. Hope that this would be the reward for her trip: she would feel the way she felt during their honeymoon, she would remember every conversation, every joke, every laugh and silence, and the feel of Peter’s thigh, warm from the sun, against hers. She felt she was tracing an unraveled ball of string to its source. They had been so happy at the beginning.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (JUN 24, 2010)

Vendela Vida’s relatively short novel, The Lovers, packs a big wallop. It is a multi-layered story about Yvonne, a widow, who returns to Turkey where she and her husband once honeymooned. She believes that by returning to the same place where they had been together early in her marriage, she will feel closer to him. Her husband Peter was recently killed in a hit and run car accident in their hometown of Burlington, Vermont. Yvonne has rented a large home, sight unseen, for a couple of weeks until she is scheduled to meet up with her son and daughter and their partners on a boating trip.

Yvonne is an aging woman who is a history teacher. Recently, she has had some troubles in the classroom. For instance, she presented a class about Cromwell twice in the same week. She knows that she is floundering, that her center is gone, but she does not know how to get it back. Perhaps, she thinks, this trip to Turkey will help her.

While in Turkey, odd things happen to her. Yvonne is renting a home that belongs to her landlord’s lover. Ozlem, the wife of Ali, the man from whom she is renting, appears one day and begins a friendship with Yvonne. Ozlem is fraught with her own problems. She is not sure whether she wants to leave Ali and she is violently jealous of Ali’s affair. Ozlem is also pregnant but not sure if Ali is the father.

Yvonne has two children, Aurelia and Matthew. Matthew has been good at everything since she was a child and Aurelia has been a drug addict, in and out of rehab a good many times. This trip they are all planning to take is to be a pre-wedding trip for Matthew;  Yvonne is fearful that some catastrophic event will happen with Aurelia before the trip commences. Aurelia’s drug addiction had caused a lot of friction between Yvonne and Peter during their marriage.

Yvonne likes to drive to the beach. While there, she meets a young boy who sells sea shells. Yvonne strikes up a friendship with him and commissions him to find shells for her. She looks at him as one would a new-found possibility, a friendship or child that is a tabla rasa. She begins to endow him with qualities that he doesn’t really possess but that she needs him to have.

Throughout her time in Turkey, which is fraught with panic, eerie circumstances, and darkness, Yvonne looks back on her marriage and tries to find the truth of what it really was. As she progresses in finding the truth, she becomes first weaker and then gains strength. She realizes that her marriage was not what she thought it was and that she is not really the woman she thought she was in her relationship. She sadly realizes that “these were two of her strengths: changing the subject and feigning ignorance.” She also realizes how very strong her love for her daughter is.

I found the book mesmerizing. The plot alone is enough to carry the book along but the atmospheric suspense makes it even more present and portentous. This book is a sensory experience, at times subtle like watching fish swim in a small pond. At other times, it feels like you are in the eye of the hurricane.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 26 readers
PUBLISHER:	Ecco (June 22, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Vendela Vida
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another book based on grief with suspense: Stay by Nicola Giffith Read our review of her husband’s book: Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Bibliography:

• And Now You Can Go (2003)
• Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name (2007)
• The Lovers (June 2010)

Non-fiction:

• Girls on the Verge (2000)
• The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers (2000)