Customer Reviews

Dancing Floor

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Of the six or seven Buchan novels I have read so far this one is quickly rising to the top of the list of favorites as the author weaves together a compelling cast of very believable characters and places them in situations where the reader can instantly feel a sense of quick sympathy for their plight.

John Buchan writes in such descriptive and romantic terms that the reader is drawn in and transported to a day gone by where gentleman were expected to behave as such and ladies were allowed to be feminine while still exhibiting strength of character. Buchan's cast of central characters are at once believable and sympathetic -yet still slightly larger than life.

This novel marks the third or fourth appearance of Sir Edward 'Ned' Leithen. A British Barrister. Having no children of his own he undertakes to protect a young orphaned gentleman, Vernon Milbourne, as he is coming of age in polite British society. Vernon is haunted by a recurring dream which he divulges only to the trusted confidences of Leithen. The dream is fantastic in the sense that it causes even today's jaded and media saturated reader to notice the hair on the back of the neck raised in quiet unknown fear.

The final character, Kor'e Arabin is a vivacious young woman whom today would be known as a 'flapper.' Buchan is at first repulsed by her garish and vulgar modern crudity. Yet as he gets to know her He finds himself drawn sympathetically to her aid on the mysterious Greek island of Plakos, a place at once beautifully romantic with it's crystal blue waters, lush fields, forests and mountains. Yet it is also horrifying with it's all too real description of a superstitious people grappling with a post war torn economy in which they are cut-off from modernity and hungry in every real sense of the word. The three characters converge in a climactic way very much in the Buchan tradition.

There are a couple of peculiarities about the authors style that a new Buchan reader should be forewarned about. First, the author, having written this story in the early part of the twentieth century, uses racial terms in a way that can be somewhat offensive to today's sensitive reader. I'll leave it at that. Second, in this novel the main character seems to have an almost romantic attachment to the younger man, Vernon Milborne. The author, again writing in a style from a very different era, does not intend to convey it as such, but today's culturally sensitive reader is perhaps initially predisposed to consider the intended relationship as such. It is not.

If you are wanting to settle in with a story that is romantically larger than life you will enjoy this novel. it is a great rainy-day or weekend read!

I first read this book some 30 years ago. The book was lost in the course of time. I've now reordered it.

The book is dark, mysterious, and magical. The prose is often lyrical. Buchan is known for the "39 Steps" of Hitchcock fame, but Hitchcock should have done this one too.

Highly recommended.