Dancing Through Fire

The story takes place starting in 1870 in Paris. Sylvie is a young dancer in the Paris Opera Ballet, one of the group of beginners, basically, the lower stratum of the dance groups. She has a sister, Chantel, who was kicked out of the ballet for laziness. She lives with her mother who was also in ballet.

She doesn't attend regular school, centering her entire life around her dreams of being in the ballet.

There's also some material relating to the painter Degas, and there's some discussion of this in the Author's Notes section. The major portion of the book centers around the French war with the Prussians and the presence of communist thinkers in the city. This has a direct impact on the opera itself and on Sylvie's pursuit of her opera career.

For someone who loves the ballet this could be a good book. On the other hand, if you don't like ballet, or if you aren't very familiar with, then this is a book you can get easily lost in. There's a plethora of ballet terms, yet the author fails to include any kind of a glossary of what those terms mean. It thus is like reading a book on any subject you aren't familiar with, where the author uses lot of in-subject terms, leaving you somewhat bewildered about just what is going on.

I also think the fact that Sylvie doesn't go to school at all and sees it as of no importance is not the best message to send to young adults who might be reading this book. Pursuing your dream is important, yes, but doing that to the total exclusion of any kind of “standard” education is not the wisest course of action.

The entire section dealing with the war between France and Prussia would be of interest to someone who is really into that period of history; I'm not, though, and so that was another factor that basically caused the book, at least for me, to be boring.

I think it's basically a boring book about a subject which I'm not particularly interested in and in which the author did little if anything to raise my interest.

Main Index

Young adult Index