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    Dancing Backwards
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    Dancing Backwards
    Unavailable
    Dancing Backwards
    Audiobook6 hours

    Dancing Backwards

    Written by Salley Vickers

    Narrated by Jilly Bond

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    The brilliant new work from the bestselling author of ‘Miss Garnet’s Angel’ and ‘The Other Side of You’.

    Violet Hetherington has taken the rash step of joining a transatlantic cruise ship to New York to visit Edwin, an old friend. As she makes the six day crossing, she relives the traumatic events that led to her losing Edwin's friendship, and abandoning her career as a poet, for the safety of marriage and domesticity.

    Despite her natural reserve, she meets a rich variety of passengers travelling with her, who affect her understanding of her own past. Most significantly, she meets Dino, the dance host, whose motives in befriending Vi are shady, but who teaches her to ballroom dance - and inadvertently helps her to recover from her past.

    Moving between the late sixties and the present day, Dancing Backwards is written with the lightness of touch and psychological insight which characterise Salley Vickers' acclaimed work. This bittersweet novel is subtle, poignant and wonderfully entertaining.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateAug 6, 2009
    ISBN9780007338443
    Unavailable
    Dancing Backwards
    Author

    Salley Vickers

    Salley Vickers’ subtle, witty style and clear-eyed observation of human nature has been compared to Penelope Fitzgerald and Barbara Pym. She has worked as a university teacher of literature, specialising in Shakespeare, and in adult education, where she specialised in the literature of the ancient world. She is a trained analytical psychologist and lectures widely on the connections between literature, psychology and religion. She divides her time between London, Venice and the West Country.

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    Reviews for Dancing Backwards

    3.5/5

    55 ratings10 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I found this pretty enjoyable. The cruise storyline was nice, but I really found the sections of Vi’s past with Edwin and Bruno to be very fascinating. The ending was alright but I found myself wanting more. Which I suppose just demonstrates Vickers’ amazing writing.
    • 5/5
      I loved every page. Well told tale.
    • 3/5
      I found this pretty enjoyable. The cruise storyline was nice, but I really found the sections of Vi’s past with Edwin and Bruno to be very fascinating. The ending was alright but I found myself wanting more. Which I suppose just demonstrates Vickers’ amazing writing.
    • 3/5
      I found this pretty enjoyable. The cruise storyline was nice, but I really found the sections of Vi’s past with Edwin and Bruno to be very fascinating. The ending was alright but I found myself wanting more. Which I suppose just demonstrates Vickers’ amazing writing.
    • 4/5
      Another highly enjoyable book by Salley Vickers. Her writing has such a light, almost cosy, touch yet amidst the ordinary things of life and love she deals with hugely complex issues. She writes as someone who is philosophically and theologically aware and there is always a feeling of great hope shining through. I suppose for this book in particular the gentle epiphany for the main character is the (re-)discovery of the importance of grace and mercy in her life.
    • 3/5
      The story of Violet Hetherington who joins a cruise ship to America to meet again with Edwin and try to repair a friendship she felt was lost , and led to her seeking safety in a life of marriage and domesticity and giving up on a possible career as a poet. Along side the current story of the realationships on board ship is the story of the events leading up to her break with Edwin. A good read.
    • 4/5
      A beautifully written, gentle novel telling the story of Violet, as she travels from London to New York by cruise ship. This is interleaved with a series of retellings of memory, that let us see how her character has developed and how she has been affected by her significant others.
    • 4/5
      Violet, recently widowed, is travelling across the Atlantic to seek closure on a relationship she feels went wrong many years before. This is a beautifully written book that flits between her time on the boat and then her late teens/early twenties where she feels things all started to go wrong. She has led a life with children, a loving husband, and wealth but there is a burden of guilt hanging over her due to a betrayal in the past. I found myself quickly drawn into this book and look forward to the next book I read by Salley Vickers.
    • 3/5
      Violet Hetherington is travelling the Atlantic via cruise ship to seek closeure to a relationship that went wrong 20 years ago. She reads her old notebooks to remind herself of the circumstances. Edwin was a research student at Cambridge with her and Bruno was the third party in the relationship. Good characterisations.
    • 4/5
      I liked this book about recently widowed Vi who embarks on a cruise from England to New York in order to renew an old acquaintance. The writing is spare and dry and quite funny in places. Vickers does a great job of developing Vi's character through her memories of times past and through current events during the cruise, where Vi meets some interesting people, solves a mystery and even learns to dance.