Tag Archives: Kiran Millwood Hargrave

#BookReview ‘The Dance Tree’ by Kiran Millwood Hargrave #historical

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The Dance Tree by Kiran Millwood Hargrave is compelling and emotional. I read it in two long sittings, unwilling to put it down. Kiran Millwood HargraveBased on a true historical event in Strasbourg in 1518 when, one hot summer, one woman started to dance and didn’t stop. Others followed. Set at a time of extreme heat, hunger, intense religious belief and superstition, The Dance Tree takes the historical event and tells the story of a group of women and their secrets.
Lisbet, heavily pregnant with her thirteenth child, having lost the previous twelve, lives on the family farm with husband Henne and mother-in-law Sophey. They scratch a living from their bees, selling honey and beeswax. They await the arrival of the baby, and of Henne’s sister Agnethe returning from seven years of punishment at a nunnery. Many things are unspoken. Lisbet, feeling secrets are kept from her, finds support with her best friend Ida. But always she feels as if the Wilers blame her for bringing bad luck to the farm, bad luck because Lisbet was born on the day of a comet, a comet which bought bad luck and starvation to the land.
So many things are unspoken. What happened before Lisbet married Henne and joined the Wiler family. What shame did Nethe commit to deserve her banishment and, now she is returned, why is there such hatred between her and Ida. Lisbet, feeling estranged from her husband and mother-in-law, struggles to make sense of what is happening. What is the family hiding from her, and why. The family has so many secrets, including the secrets Lisbet is hiding about her mother’s death.
The power balance at the Wiler house changes as the three women are left alone. Henne travels to Heidelberg to give evidence in court that their bees are free creatures in nature and are not wilfully stealing nectar from the wildflowers at the monastery. Meanwhile in town women begin dancing. First one, trance-like, hearing music that those watching cannot hear. More join in, at first a spectacle for the town’s inhabitants. But then, as more people join in, fear begins to circulate. Are they ill, are they mad. And how will the church control the hysteria.
Into the Wiler home come two lodgers, two musicians paid by the church to play music to drive the devil from the dancing women. And so the power balance shifts again in the Wiler household, especially as one of the men is a Turk, an infidel. The power of religious belief and superstition is overwhelming. Heat, poverty, hunger all increase the pressure to conform. Judgement against those who do not fit in or whose behaviour is judged sinful or simply different is uncompromising. Those wielding the power, the Twenty One, are strong men filled with pomposity and arrogance. They are quick to judge and will not hear evidence or allow people to make witness. Women’s voices are not heard.
Lisbet’s place of sanctuary is a linden tree, hidden deep in the forest in an impenetrable tangle of bushes. There she can be herself, remember her mother and grieve for her lost babies. Her mother had a tree like this near Lisbet’s childhood home, it was called a dance tree. When Lisbet visits her tree she finds peace in its solitude. At every visit she leaves a small offering, a pebble, a feather, a flower. She feels safe there but in truth there is safety nowhere. When the Twenty One sees the dancing women, decisions about what to do – to punish the women or care for them – are made individually according to the woman’s standing and position in society, obedient or sinner.
Like Hargrave’s previous novel The Mercies, this is a powerful mesmerising novel tight with tension, betrayal and threat leavened by snatches of love and togetherness. Excellent.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

Click the title to read my review of THE MERCIES, also by Kiran Millwood Hargrave.

If you like this, try:-
‘Orphans of the Carnival’ by Carol Birch
‘The Wicked Cometh’ by Laura Carlin
‘Gone are the Leaves’ by Anne Donovan

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE DANCE TREE by Kiran Millwood Hargrave https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-5Tk via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-
Jess Kidd

#BookReview ‘The Mercies’ by Kiran Millwood Hargrave #historical

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Based on a historical event, The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave tells the story of a village on a remote island in 17th century Norway after a once-in-a-lifetime storm kills the village’s fishermen. Following the loss of their husbands, brothers and sons, Vardø becomes a settlement of women. Kiran Millwood HargraveAt first they grieve then they struggle to survive without men, but survive they do. Eighteen months later a government official arrives to impose control on a female population at the edge of nowhere. He finds the women behaving in an unseemly manner, behaving as men, forsaking church and flirting with officially disapproved-of Sámi rituals.
Hargrave tells the story of the women of Vardø through the viewpoints of two very different women. Maren Magnusdatter’s fiancé Dag is killed in the storm. So are her father and brother. She lives in a claustrophobic house with her elderly mother, her Sámi sister-in-law Diinna and Diinna’s son Erik. Ursula lives in Bergen with her widowed father and sister. When her father proposes a marriage match to Absalom Cornet, a Scottishman, Ursa imagines ice and darkness. She sails north with her new husband, a stranger, of whom she knows nothing.
When they arrive on the island of Vardø, Ursa is unused to the ways of the far north, the cold, the starkness of life and, used to a servant, cannot keep house or make food. Her house becomes slovenly, her thin inadequate clothes caked with mud. Maren takes pity on the newcomer and helps her prepare meat and make a coat from furs. A close friendship grows between the two women. Hargrave’s portrayal of the machinations of this small female community – the alliances, the petty jealousies, the childhood envies, the gossip, the lies – is spot-on. But while the women are watching each other, Commissioner Cornet is watching them and looking for signs of witchcraft. Maren and Ursa encourage Diinna to at least attend church, to set aside her Sámi folklore habits of stones and poppets, but Diinna will not become someone she is not. And then Ursa’s husband makes his first arrest and for the first time Ursa understands she is married to a witchfinder.
I quickly became absorbed in the story of these women and the situation in which they find themselves. It is a difficult read at the beginning, the setting is dour and the life hard, descriptions of the daily privations are depressing, but the growing relationship between the two women lies at the core of the story.
The middle section sags a little as there is a pause in the action, waiting for the witch hunting to begin. The final third is devastating.
A fascinating book about a harrowing story.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Click the title to read my review of THE DANCE TREE, also by Kiran Millwood Hargrave.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Witchfinder’s Sister’ by Beth Underdown
‘The Western Wind’ by Samantha Harvey
‘Burial Rites’ by Hannah Kent

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE MERCIES by Kiran Millwood Hargrave https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4Nj via @SandraDanby