|
Jane Chadwick, a hip, successful Manhattan cake baker, returns to her Rhode Island home town to try to reconnect with the daughter she gave up for adoption during college. That her journey home is complicated by her younger sister Sylvie, a librarian, who has remained in place and is currently trying to take care of their ailing diabetic mother, a retired high-school principal. Meanwhile, Jane's biological daughter, Chloe, is fifteen and trying to come to terms with adolescence and her own identity. And Chloe's Uncle Dylan is trying to revive his family's apple orchard.
Everyone is trying so very hard that they need to be re-taught to appreciate the simplest things --- an apple tart, a tattoo, and yes, a dance. Simple, right? But Rice's stories are like homespun coverlets atop artisanal beds with dovetail joints; the surface is beautiful, plain, and honest, but what's underneath takes time to craft and is tricky to put together. In this case, a story about people confronting loss yet reconnecting drapes a complicated world of fear. Jane is frightened that she's lost the most important thing in the world to her; Margaret is afraid of the Alzheimer's that creeps up on her, Sylvie is afraid she'll never have a life of her own, and Chloe is afraid she'll never really know who she is. Not to mention the blame! Jane blames Margaret for forcing her into a Hobson's Choice; Chloe's father blames his brother Dylan for wasting money on agriculture; Chloe blames herself for not being worthy of a smooth operator's attentions.
Rice weaves all of this together artfully, at times almost too artfully. Of course Jane and Dylan fall for each other. Of course Chloe thinks Jane is the coolest thing ever to come around. Of course the shy, potbellied fellow teacher asks Sylvie to play Scrabble. Of course the farm stand, filled with Jane's flaky tarts, wins customers. Of course the two nursing homes Jane and Sylvie must investigate for their mother's care are filled with light and warmly caring staff members. This is what makes Rice one of those authors with matching dustjackets, an author whose recognizable style and guaranteed delivery of the goods makes them publishers' darlings.
However, I remember Luanne Rice's first novel, CRAZY IN LOVE, and how struck I was by its honesty; I see that same honesty in DANCE WITH ME, despite its sometimes pat plot points. Jane's experience of young love and her despair over giving up her baby that also results in her giving up a promising career are rendered unsentimentally. This is certainly a novel about the "family dance," as others have called it, but it's also a novel about the solitary dance we each choreograph for ourselves --- letting go, hanging on, and coming home.
Without spoiling the plot, I have to say that the dilemma at the heart of DANCE WITH ME just can't happen today, and certainly will not be relevant 20 years from now. Rice understands this very well. Instead of creating a book that will be unreadable in 20 years, she has written a story that takes the full measure of its time without seeming trapped by it.
--- Reviewed by Bethanne Kelly Patrick
• Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.
© Copyright 1996-2010, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
Back to top.
|
