It is 1972: a group of teenagers from Dublin and Derry are spending a month in Donegal, learning Irish language and culture. Liberated for the first time from the restricting reins of parental control, they respond to the untamed landscape of river, hill and sea, finding in it unnerving echoes of their own submerged - and now emerging - wildnesses. Eilis Ni Dhuibhne uses the experiences and emotions of girls on the cusp of womanhood to explore dangerous territories of sex, politics, class and Irishness.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Irish writer Dhuibhne (The Inland Ice; Blood and Water) offers an unruffled, pedestrian view of the lives of pubescent Irish girls in 1972, as a group of teenyboppers embark on their first long trip away from their Dublin and Derry homes. The girls take a bus to Donegal, to attend the summer session at an Irish language and culture school called a Gaeltacht. Two of them, fat misfit Orla and effortlessly perfect Aisling, assume center stage in the mild drama, although Dhuibhne sketches a large cast of supporting characters, including other students and the families the girls board with in Donegal. The story unfolds through quietly revealing dialogue rather than any clear direction in the plot. The young people attend classes and dances, acclimate themselves to their new surroundings, scuffle with familial and social loyalties and endure each other's minor betrayals and teen epiphanies. Orla actively avoids visiting an elderly aunt until the very end of her stay, but when she finally meets her relative, her predictable surprise at the old woman's warmth and endearing eccentricity is tepidly rendered, dissipating the energy for what could have been a poignant, illuminating scene. The girls take every opportunity to swim in a local river, and tragedy is foreshadowed, but when it comes it involves people outside the Gaeltacht, has no impact on the main characters and is dismissed in a page. The pace is sluggish, and the characters, introduced in initially engaging portraits, develop no further as the book progresses. Such obstructions to narrative flow and realized characters blunt the power of Dhuibhne's occasionally lovely prose. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Review
'Ni Dhuibhne has a great way of mixing and merging the realistic with something otherworldly, like crossing an Alice Munro or an Anne Tyler with an Angela Carter or a Jeanette Winterson.' Books Ireland 'With a delicate touch not unlike Arundhati Roy's in The God of Small Things, Ni Dhuibhne sneaks under the ill-fitting skin of her metamorphosing Derry and Dublin cast. Their stories unravel in shifting voices with all the wisdom and perspective of an omniscient narrator.' Sunday Business Post 'Ni Dhuibhne's writing is marvellous, building layers of impression until a complex, vital and true-false picture of liberation is revealed.' Irish Times 'Her observations are lemon-fresh, her writing beautiful, witty and wry.' Sunday Express 'The author portrays the wild beauty of north Donegal, the doubt and confusion of girls just beginning to discover their sexuality, with a lyrical use of language that perfectly catches the mood of both time and place. The book is a joy to read and sustains the air of wonder, of unsolved mystery to the final chapter.' Irish Immigrant Review
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lyrical and light,
By Nef (Urban east coast, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Dancers Dancing (Paperback)
When I bought this book in Ireland last year, it was on the bestseller shelves in the bookstores, so Eilis seems popular in her home country. I wanted vacation reading that was literary and reflected the culture of the people in whose country I was a visitor. The book is pretty short, but I feel that is appropriate for the subject matter; it is essentially a string of childhood reminisces loosely gathered into a simple plot, which centers on a group of young pre-teen and teenage Irish and Northern Irish schoolgirls who leave their cities to attend a Gaelic-language school/camp in County Donegal (northwest, Irish-speaking, traditional region). The short, sweet, lyrical tale is light without being fluffy, and touches on issues of sexual discovery, class and political stratification, and parent-child relationships. The author beautifully evokes traditional rural Ireland in the 1960's as it is seen through the eyes of saucy urban schoolgirls on the brink of self-discovery.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Languidly paced, the summer of '72 Irish style,
By
This review is from: The Dancers Dancing (Paperback)
For all of Ni Dhuibhne's ambition here, the tale she tells drags on. This novel's considered her best by Irish critics, but I believe some of the plaudits it's earned this may be due to the critics' shared memories of studying Irish at summer colleges, rather than the intrinsic merits of the book itself. She varies narrative styles, and at the end her central character comes into the book as a first-person voice which has been for the previous chapters conveyed through the third person, although rarely does the storyline diverge from the perspective of this girl, Orla. Trouble is, sluggish and rather dour, she's not that fascinating a figure to devote so much energy to. Yes, class and political and cultural differences all emerge but these seem by repetition beaten into dullness. The book does not pick up after the girls settle in their summer digs, and the action's told languidly.
One chapter I liked presented the transition into the Irish-language college for the girls; the sentences upended themselves into what the Irish language would be literally translated as, and this does imitate the shift of mentality and comprehension that these city girls would experience when, in various states of readiness or not, they face immersion into their learned language. Less than I expected happens in the classes. Most of the book centers around the home they stay in, the conversations they have, and the scenery they explore. It's all respectably presented, but never really leaps off the page to fire your imagination. A rare exception: I wish more of the book kept the style of the fine opening section, which takes the bird's eye view and then comes slowly down to earth. But, overall, the novel went on at twice the length it needed to conjure up the feel of adolescence, laziness, and anxiety. The pace is sluggish. Perhaps this mimics the rhythms of a summer month spent in Donegal, as the book explicitly considers the parallel. But, why take so long to get this across to the patient reader? There's not much of a pay-off at the anticlimactic end, as Orla finally gets the courage to see her Auntie Annie. This, admittedly, is handled subtly and reflects the view of the teenager's mingled awe and resentment and hesitation at meeting her addled elderly relative. But, as the culmination of the work, it's not much return on the reader's investment. The afterword, too, is more matter-of-fact then it could have been, and the angst and longing that Orla apparently reveals in the last few pages seems more of an afterthought than a fully integrated continuation of all that she's before pondered. While Ni Dhuibhne does offer a novel full of rather mundane occurences, as if to emphasize the few moments when life detours from the quotidian, the result when stretched thin over more than 200 pages remains too flat and plain.
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