Amanda Craig reviews Cassandra Golds' Claire-de-Lune for the Times. I recently received this one from Random House and, based on Craig's review, it's heading to the top of the review pile.
Craig begins her review by discussing her inherent distrust of ballet books:
- "Even Ballet Shoes did not go into the agony and the ecstasy of ballet as artistic ideal or ordeal; we were simply told that Posy Fossil has an inborn genius for it.
The film Billy Elliot came much closer, as does Eva Ibbotson’s captivating romantic comedy, A Company of Swans. But only Cassandra Golds’s Clair-de-Lune takes us both into the dream of dance, and the nightmare.
Craig finds that, "Golds writes with a profound sympathy for lonely, sensitive children that I have come across only in Joan Aiken’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and Elizabeth Goudge’s The Little White Horse."
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I also learned from the Times today, that Marian Keyes has a new novel out. It won't be out in the States until June 1, but that's fine. Marian Keyes is for vacation, for the beach. Marian Keyes always produces a fun read, but one with a difference. As David Baddiel writes in "His Words," Keyes is something special:
- "It’s clear ... from reading Anybody Out There? that Keyes defies the stereotype of chick-lit as much as she conforms to it. There is much fluffiness and feelgood-ness, but there is also death, grief, nervous breakdown and a hard underlying seam of Irish bleakness."
Awesome. I can't wait.
