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The Dance Tree: A BBC Between the Covers book club pick

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In the hot summer heat there’s a ‘Dance Plague’ in Strasbourg, it begins with a woman dancing in wild abandon for days, nobody can stop her and she doesn’t take food or rest, it’s almost as if she is in a trance. I was intrigued that the dancing seemed to occur around St Vitus Day, and it made me wonder if this was the origin of the phrase I have heard used referring to restless people having 'St Vitus's Dance'! Overall I would say if you enjoyed The Mercies then I think you’ll enjoy this one too; if you didn’t enjoy The Mercies, then you’ll maybe like this one a little better…but will you love it? May be because both the historical episode and setting as well as the story are rather slim, something else had to give body to the novel. There are a few spelling mistakes here and there (vice instead of vise no less than 3 times) and some oddly phrased sentences, grammar-wise, but this is an ARC and I’m hoping these will be repaired in the finished copy.

These two historical events underpin Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s book, especially the dancing plague in Strasbourg. At the moment Gepa Bauer’s mother felt the first pain of her coming, her papa saw it, a burning star ripping the dark sky for three days while her mother laboured on all fours like a beast, her husband and sons sleeping in the barn because they were scared of her pain, of the blood, of the wise woman who came with sweet mallow and iron tongs. So much is unspoken but still weighs heavily on Lisbet and on many others here, the harshness of the life, the brutal weather, the church pronouncements of human evils and need to atone, and now these dancing women who seem gripped by some mania causing them to dance and dance, often until they bleed or drop. The Mercies’ also suffered somewhat from the Bury Your Gays trope / Dead Lesbian Syndrome, where LGBT+ relationships are frustrated or denied fulfilment, either through death or permanent separation. The world-at-large remains too often a hostile place for people who live, look, or love a different way.And I mostly live happily ever after with these other books, though occasionally I pick one of these up, only to be reminded of that wizard and how he turned my already cold heart into a chunk of frozen iceberg. I was fascinated to learn of this historic event known as the Dancing Plague of 1518 and taken by the story of these women who in their own way dance to their own music.

That Milwood Hargrave can turn a beautiful sentence isn’t in question, but future work would benefit from the more considered deployment of this talent. Over the next few days, she is joined by hundreds of other women as a “dancing mania” spreads across the city. Based on a true event in Strasbourg in 1518, this is the backgound of a story that features four very strong women.What interested me into this story was the time period of plaque in the 16th century Europe and women who faced the religious obsessions. The sixteenth century was a period of extreme weather which meant years of failed harvests, searingly hot summers and winters so cold that people literally froze to death in the streets. This was probably a very deliberate choice by the author but I found it put me on edge as I read because the reveal took so long to come.

A sister-in-law, Agnethe, she has never met, is due back shortly after having spent seven years of penance at a nunnery in the mountains. In the face of punishment they defy the cruelty of men and the church (no difference really between the two here ) for the right to love, to be and show who they are. She has a tree in the woods, (a dance tree) where she has installed a private sanctuary, where she has ribbons to honor the past babies lost. What must it be, to be a man and be able to leave your grief behind, or else shrink it small enough to carry about in a pocket, and bear it enough to live a different life? Whilst not enjoying this one quite as much as 'The Mercies', I still found it an engrossing and enjoyable read, demonstrating yet again how Christian beliefs were manipulated by those men in power to subjugate the population, in particular the female sex, and what this eventually resulted in.

The story is ambitious in its scope, involving natural occurrence, possible war, prejudice, and more. This interweaving of the past with the present is deftly done with the author’s incredible capacity for empathy illuminating the sensitive topics that the story incorporates. Other background elements of that history are also included such as the ongoing incursion of the Ottoman Empire into the Holy Roman Empire as well as issues of immigration of unwanted peoples into France from the East.

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