REVIEW: The Little Dancer
Nov. 10th, 2025 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllThe Little Dancer: Lorna Hill. Award Publications, 1997
The latest in the ‘Dancer’ series about Annette Dancy and friends follows them from the making of the film ‘Pride O’The North’ to just past its premiere. It’s more or less chronological, although it sometimes repeats some periods, most obviously over Hogmanay, to cover what various characters are doing, and is somewhat episodic. A bull causes one character to faint, another (character, not bull) takes over a hot dog kiosk briefly, there’s a tense drive through a blizzard and an accident on a Skye mountain.
Annette feels the pull of her two halves in this book, but mainly that’s her English half, rooted in Northumbria and feeling homesick for it, exacerbated by her brief visits back, and the dancing half that comes from her French parentage, apparently. To all appearances, she is a child, younger than her actual age of fifteen, and she’s mainly a child within, although smitten Angus gets away with a kiss at Christmas because of mistletoe.
The director of her dance school and the Cosmopolitan Dance Company is worried about the pull of the movies on Annette. But at the start of the book, she’s frustrated by all the hanging around and filming out of order, for she is the lead in the ballet within the film. The producer sees the potential in her, as does Monsieur Georges, although when filming is over, he holds her to his promise to be a lowly student so that she doesn’t get a big head, although she is in her last year at the dance school. The book leads up to her making the choice between a lucrative movie contract that would allow her mother to have all the comforts she’s been denied, and her true calling.
A good deal of the book is set in Skye, where Jaimie Gordon, the laird of Airdrochnish, is not staying in his ancestral home, having rented it out to the rich, good-natured, if not perceptive American Slaughters. Sheena Macdonald is there, facing losing her ailing mother, which will then make her the ward of Jaimie (and Mr MacCrimmon). The irony is that Jaimie is to star in the film because of his climbing skills, which he hates and only swallows because the money will enable him to carry on living in said ancestral home, while Sheena, who would love to be an actress, even if she has a very romantic notion of what it entails, is kept out of the action.
As I’ve said before, the masterful boys and young men that Hill writes as romantic figures don’t really work for me. I find their authoritative ways bossy and demeaning. Yes, Sheena’s silly, but some of that is because she’s been so strictly sheltered. She learns a hard lesson about reality when she falls for some sweet talk and all but runs away to London with very little money on the promise of a dream job. I also really didn’t like ‘Himself’ getting to be her chief guardian when he clearly intended to marry her and be her lord and master. Angus, who is clearly in love with immature Annette, plays more of a background role in this book, and didn’t irritate me quite so much as in ‘Dancer’s Luck’.
Hill does a lot of explaining of characters’ motives, how Maisie Slaughter misses undercurrents, how Annette’s monomania for ballet means that she doesn’t bother with her appearance, and what could tempt her away from her career, what Monsieur Georges is playing at and so on for everyone. Characters from the Wells series make an appearance, with Oscar Devreaux’s writing about Annette’s potential sending her into raptures, after he sees her dance as The Little Matchgirl. I will merely note that both the big Hollywood men who try to tempt Annette away from the purity of her calling to make them money have Jewish surnames, although this was true of many Hollywood moguls in the 1950s.
The latest in the ‘Dancer’ series about Annette Dancy and friends follows them from the making of the film ‘Pride O’The North’ to just past its premiere. It’s more or less chronological, although it sometimes repeats some periods, most obviously over Hogmanay, to cover what various characters are doing, and is somewhat episodic. A bull causes one character to faint, another (character, not bull) takes over a hot dog kiosk briefly, there’s a tense drive through a blizzard and an accident on a Skye mountain.
Annette feels the pull of her two halves in this book, but mainly that’s her English half, rooted in Northumbria and feeling homesick for it, exacerbated by her brief visits back, and the dancing half that comes from her French parentage, apparently. To all appearances, she is a child, younger than her actual age of fifteen, and she’s mainly a child within, although smitten Angus gets away with a kiss at Christmas because of mistletoe.
The director of her dance school and the Cosmopolitan Dance Company is worried about the pull of the movies on Annette. But at the start of the book, she’s frustrated by all the hanging around and filming out of order, for she is the lead in the ballet within the film. The producer sees the potential in her, as does Monsieur Georges, although when filming is over, he holds her to his promise to be a lowly student so that she doesn’t get a big head, although she is in her last year at the dance school. The book leads up to her making the choice between a lucrative movie contract that would allow her mother to have all the comforts she’s been denied, and her true calling.
A good deal of the book is set in Skye, where Jaimie Gordon, the laird of Airdrochnish, is not staying in his ancestral home, having rented it out to the rich, good-natured, if not perceptive American Slaughters. Sheena Macdonald is there, facing losing her ailing mother, which will then make her the ward of Jaimie (and Mr MacCrimmon). The irony is that Jaimie is to star in the film because of his climbing skills, which he hates and only swallows because the money will enable him to carry on living in said ancestral home, while Sheena, who would love to be an actress, even if she has a very romantic notion of what it entails, is kept out of the action.
As I’ve said before, the masterful boys and young men that Hill writes as romantic figures don’t really work for me. I find their authoritative ways bossy and demeaning. Yes, Sheena’s silly, but some of that is because she’s been so strictly sheltered. She learns a hard lesson about reality when she falls for some sweet talk and all but runs away to London with very little money on the promise of a dream job. I also really didn’t like ‘Himself’ getting to be her chief guardian when he clearly intended to marry her and be her lord and master. Angus, who is clearly in love with immature Annette, plays more of a background role in this book, and didn’t irritate me quite so much as in ‘Dancer’s Luck’.
Hill does a lot of explaining of characters’ motives, how Maisie Slaughter misses undercurrents, how Annette’s monomania for ballet means that she doesn’t bother with her appearance, and what could tempt her away from her career, what Monsieur Georges is playing at and so on for everyone. Characters from the Wells series make an appearance, with Oscar Devreaux’s writing about Annette’s potential sending her into raptures, after he sees her dance as The Little Matchgirl. I will merely note that both the big Hollywood men who try to tempt Annette away from the purity of her calling to make them money have Jewish surnames, although this was true of many Hollywood moguls in the 1950s.
