Dance Move
£8.70£9.50 (-8%)
‘One of the greats’ – Lucy Caldwell, author of Intimacies
‘Comic brilliance’ – Sinéad Gleeson, author of Constellations
‘Ingenious’ – The Irish Times
‘Daring, funny, heartbreaking’ – Observer
Following the prize-winning Sweet Home, Wendy Erskine’s Belfast is once again illuminated. Meet Drew Lord Haig, called on to sing an obscure hit from his youth at a paramilitary event. Meet Max as he recalls an eventful journey to a Christian film festival. And Mrs Dallesandro who dreams of being a teenager again as she sits in a tanning salon on her wedding anniversary. In these stories, Erskine’s characters’ wishes and hopes often fall short of their grasp. Brilliantly drawn, Dance Move is about the hugeness of life as seen through glimpses of the everyday.
‘A masterpiece’ – David Keenan, author of Monument Maker
‘Wendy Erskine’s debut, Sweet Home, was pitch perfect . . . Dance Move is equally brilliant’ – The Daily Mail
‘Erskine’s stories open slight, but they contain more than it seems possible for short stories to contain’ – Keith Ridgway, author of Hawthorn & Child
‘She isn’t just one of the leading writers of short fiction at work today but one of the leading writers, period.’ – Matt Rowland Hill, author of Original Sins
As Read on BBC Radio 4
Shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize
Shortlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards Short Story of the Year
The Irish Times Books of the Year 2022
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Additional information
| Publisher | Main Market edition (9 Feb. 2023), Picador |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 240 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 1529085225 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1529085228 |
| Reading age | 18 years and up |
| Dimensions | 13 x 2.9 x 19.8 cm |
by Catmandu
This collection by prize-winning Northern Irish writer Wendy Erskine was recently broadcast on Radio Four’s Book at Bedtime. It’s worth seeking it out in print for the full experience. Erskine’s characters are ordinary Belfast people, cleaners and care workers, struggling to get by. Each story covers a moment when they rebel, hoping for love or excitement. Inevitably the rebellion peters out, and we leave them almost, where they started. Erskine is an immensely gifted writer. She can twist our heartstrings with a few words or make us laugh sympathetically. These are short stories of the highest quality.
by V. Halliday
Dance Move is an absorbing collection of Northern Irish short stories,focussing on characters who feel very real and well realised. I enjoyed encountering the protagonists, especially the middle aged women – normally an underexplored demographic of fiction.
I’ll be looking out for more work by Wendy Erskine.
Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.
by M. S. Harland
Loved this second book of short stories by Wendy Erskine. She brings the characters to life with such skill that they linger in the memory long after reading. I tried to read this slowly as I didn’t want it to be over !!
Highly recommend.
by janice smyth
Was stunned by this. Looking forward to more.
by sevenpin
This is my first experience of Wendy Erksine’s short stories set in Northern Ireland, and I can only marvel at her abilities to capture people, painting authentic pictures of their characters with so few words and the wide range of circumstances they find themselves in, including within families, their pasts, traumas, feelings, relationships, the unexpected, the tragedies, the idiosyncratic, and the joys. She has a real ear for dialogue, there is dark humour and humanity in her astutely observed, unvarnished and insightful writing. Despite the short length of the stories, Erskine had me totally immersed in the worlds she creates, and the characters and scenarios she imagines.
To give you a taste of her fiction, we have Roberta who cleans short lets for a living, working for Mr Dalzell, who finds a young girl that she takes home, kitting her and buying her supplies, and taking her to school, finding herself reflecting on her own difficulties at school. We follow Mrs Dallesandro, her preparations for celebrating her 23rd wedding anniversary and her significant memories of her past, Marty and Rhonda attend a birthday party at her sister’s home, and a mother is intent on removing the missing posters of her son, Curtis, noticing, almost indignantly, that there are now new posters of the latest missing person. Kate struggles with her rebellious 13 year old daughter, Clara (who has no intention of doing ballet), and her unsuitable friend, Stacey, knowing she will have to take over the care of her brother, Mark, on the death of her parents.
An academic film professor gives a lift to a care home employee to a film festival, only for them to come across an accident, and a young man on a work placement in Belfast finds himself in a surprising relationship, even acquiring an inheritance, from the woman he stays with. There was not a story I did not like, and amongst my favourites are Bildungsroman and Momento Mori. A fantastic short story collection that I recommend highly. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.
by Arna S.
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Incredibly memorable. Although short, very thought provoking and touching.
by Mark E Reaney
A wonderful second collection, following the excellent Sweet Home. Powerful stories that engage the reader from the start with never a word wasted. A magnificent writer.
by Barry Avis
I read this as part of the Red Lion Books (Colchester) monthly ‘surprise book’ where you buy it wrapped in brown paper without knowing what the book is. It is a great way to discover writers and books that I may not have read otherwise. This is a book of eleven short stories including one called Dance Move (the book title) about an overly protective mother. The stories are based around or have a link to Belfast and the subjects vary from a woman held prisoner to another who loses her son in an accident but in all of them the lead characters are female.
As it is a collection of short stories it is very easy to finish a whole story in one go so this makes reading it an easy task.
However, I found that most of the stories read like a chapter from a much larger story and they left me feeling that I have not seen all of the narrative like the story is an excerpt from a novel. This meant that I felt a little underwhelmed by those stories.
The writer, Wendy Erskine, is no doubt very good but I would like to read a full novel to see how she is able to hold the readers’ interest. If you are a fan of short stories then I am sure you will like this but I was a bit disappointed.