Dance Lessons – Aine Greaney

Ellen is a French teacher at a relatively exclusive school in America’s north east. Her husband Fintan, from whom she was mostly estranged, living during the week on her campus in free accommodation from staff, dies in a sailing accident. Ellen, who had been trying to muster up the courage to leave Fintan after a marriage that had disintegrated into mental beration and abuse, is feeling as though some effort should be made to inform Fintan’s family. An Irish immigrant who was illegal for many years until his marriage to Ellen, Fintan had never returned home and told Ellen that his immediate family was deceased.

A chance run-in with an Irish woman who Ellen met briefly many years ago when she first started going  out with Fintan and who hailed from a part of Ireland very near to where Fintan did, leads Ellen to discover that Fintan’s mother is, in fact, not dead like he told but still very much alive. After sending a letter and making a phone call to the woman and getting precious little in the way of response, Ellen decides to fly to Ireland in her summer break from teaching at the school. She wants to see where Fintan grew up, do the right thing about informing his family properly and lay the ghost of her husband and their unhappy relationship to rest.

Jo, her mother-in-law is a tough and forthright sort of woman. She immediately assumes that Ellen has come to see what she can get out of Jo when Jo dies as Jo is very ill with lung cancer. After seeing how badly Jo is, and how she is struggling to cope alone on her isolated farm but refusing to go to hospital, Ellen surprises herself and Jo by offering to stay and take care of her. By staying on in Galway, she will learn the deep, dark secret that made her husband flee his native country to America without ever once looking back. She will learn what sort of woman his mother was and the actions that she undertook that made her son tell everyone, even his wife, that she was dead when she was still very much alive.

Dance Lessons is a journey of self-discovery as well as the discovery of truth about the spouse that Ellen comes to feel she never knew after he died – not really. He never chose to confide much of his life in Ireland to her at all, especially the important pieces. The fact that his mother is alive really shakes Ellen and her determination to go out and see where her husband came from and see if she can get to know him a bit better in death than she feels she did in life. Her attitude towards her recalcitrant and often rude mother in law is very patient, and her desire to stay and nurse the woman on her deathbed is really quite surprising. It’s no easy task to undertake, especially if you have no qualifications or training in that particular area and I would’ve liked to see the trials and emotional upheaval that comes with that explored a bit more in depth. It’s very much glossed over, the fact that Ellen is tending to a virtual stranger in the final days of her life. She also does this with not a single complaint or breakdown which I find a fraction unrealistic. I know that the nursing part is not what the novel is about, but it’s a rather large portion of the novel so I did expect to see a little more depth to it.

What I did like was Ellen, as a mostly-repressed American raised by strict parents who were determined for her not to get airs above her station, coming to grips with small town Ireland, especially small-town Ireland from 40 years ago. Although the narrative starts with Ellen, we switch to Jo after meeting her and she takes us back in time so that we can hear her story – how she came to marry a man old enough to be her father, forced into it by her parents and the envy she had for her sister Kitty, who had freedoms and choices that were never available to Jo. Her relationship with her son is explored for the reader to absorb – dysfunctional and often uncomfortable to read. Although fiercely proud of her extremely intelligent son, Jo was incapable of truly expressing it, although she was extremely quick to show anger. And she proves towards the end of the novel that she will go to any lengths to give her son opportunities (or take them away) and it costs her dearly in the end.

I would’ve also liked to see more from the third point of view we are treated to in this novel – it does feel a bit rushed, appearing when it does and I would’ve liked more of a background on that persons life and upbringing. I did like the actions Ellen took towards the end of the novel, they seemed very fitting with her generous nature, and because of that I’d have liked a longer epilogue with the third narrator to tie things up just a little more. You know the essentials but I’m always one for more detail! It could’ve done with more depth and character growth. I felt a bit flat, like I didn’t really care that much about the end gift because I didn’t know the recipient enough!

Dance Lessons certainly had some bright spots – I love the setting of rural Ireland and the depth of the description of local life. Even when describing current time, it was almost like taking a step back into another time and it was amazingly vivid. Especially the stories pertaining to Jo’s youth, taking place during an era that felt like much longer than 40 or so years ago, with talks of dowries and arrange marriages! Where I did feel a bit let down was the lack of character development – it doesn’t seem as though fundamentally, Ellen changes at all. Even Jo doesn’t change, despite all she has done in her life and where it got her in the end. I think that this could’ve been explored beautifully but was a little underdone.

6/10

Book #62 for 2011

**Note- I received this novel from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

I’m counting this novel towards my 2011 Irish Reading Challenge. It’s the second novel I have read for this challenge so far which means 2/4 complete! Halfway there.