After writing about some modern ballet with Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man on Sunday, it seemed fitting to write about a ballet series this Friday. All three of these were bought at Bristol conference, so I’ve even read them pretty promptly too, which doesn’t always happen for me!
I wasn’t quite sure what to call this series – I’ve called it the Helen trilogy even though that’s probably not going to mean anything to anyone but it is three books about Helen, who we follow across her ballet and dancing career. They were written in the late 1950s and take her from her audition for ballet school and initial professional experience in the first book, through dancing (ballet) in a musical theatre show in book two and on a television show in book three. There is also a love interest – because of course there is, good girls in Girl’s Own books get a nice boy – who is one of the male dancers we meet in the second half of the first book and a large portion of book three is devoted to a misunderstanding in their relationship which could have been solved by actually having a conversation and would have been very tedious if you hadn’t read the two previous books – and was still quite tedious for me when I had!
Ballet stories were among my favourite childhood reads and even now I have copies of books in the Sadlers Wells and Drina series on bookshelves that I can see as I type this post. So it’s not a suprise that I would have picked up another series of ballet storie at conference. And these aren’t anywhere near as good as those are but they’re not awful. The first is definitely the best of the three – with a clear sense of the routine of classes and training that a trainee dancer would need to try and become a professional. It’s not as good on the uncertainty or peril because there’s never really as sense that Helen isn’t going to make it – even though her parents have given her a time limit on her training she’s set up as being talented and also the teacher’s favourite. Sadler’s Wells has various obstacles that the heroines have to go through – whether it’s moving away from teachers, parents who don’t want them to dance, lack of money – and Drina has a grandmother who doesn’t want her to dance and a big secret that might make her success not entirely because of her own merits. I did like all the detail of what working in TV was like in book three and I don’t feel like I paid too much for them, but they’re not where I would be telling someone to start if they wanted a Girl’s Own ballet story to try.
This is another one of those cases where I’m not really expecting any of you to want to read these but they are going to be hard to get hold of. I can see a couple of copies of each of them on abebooks – all of them for more than I paid and more than think they’re worth. But if you’re now desparate to read them and want to make me an offer for my copies you know where I am…
Have a great weekend!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 