The Dance Tree: A BBC Between the Covers book club pick

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This book was amazing! I loved this book and it is likely to be on my best of list for the year. It had everything that I look for in a book- a grounding in a specific place or time, strong and well-crafted characters, and beautiful writing. I asked for a copy of this book due to its setting in France in the 16th century. It blew my expectations out of the water. The Times Exceptionally brilliant. Immersive, sensual, compelling and totally convincing. Accessible, ambitious, The Dance Tree deserves to win prizes Thanks to NetGalley, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, and HarperVia for this ARC. The Dance Tree will be out in the US on March 14th, 2023 ** In this gripping historical novel, the internationally bestselling author of The Mercies weaves a spellbinding tale of fear, transformation, courage, and love in sixteenth-century France. I'm sad because I WANT to love KMH's novels. I think they have a ton of merit, and I can quite see why people DO love her stories, but they just never gel quite right with me. Sadly, the (admittedly beautiful) prose just isn't for me.

So much is unspoken but still weighs heavily on Lisbet and on many others here, the harshness of the life, the brutal weather, the church pronouncements of human evils and need to atone, and now these dancing women who seem gripped by some mania causing them to dance and dance, often until they bleed or drop. What will happen to them? The story focuses for the most part on Lisbet, a beekeeper and farmer's wife on the outskirts of Strasbourg. However, we get little interludes where we see a snapshot of some of the women who ended up caught up in the dance plague, and these were excellently executed to show us a little of who they were as people and how they ended up dancing. This is part of a continued theme throughout the book of focusing on the lives and personhood of the women of this story, and rooting the answer to why the plague happened in their lives and experiences and psyches. The author in a note at the end of this book says ” It is difficult for contemporary readers to understand the absolute role of religion in medieval life, how fully it informed everything from medicine to punishment, tax to sex.” But I found this beautifully written, impactful novel to be a stunning presentation of that iron fisted influence during that time and place, in particular on women. It is brilliantly depicted through the strength and courage of three women held down by cultural and religious beliefs. In the face of punishment they defy the cruelty of men and the church (no difference really between the two here ) for the right to love, to be and show who they are. These women, Lisbet, Ida and Agnethe - marginalized, with no power or freedom, embody the strength and courage that women today will need as men try to control their health, their bodies, their choices. It’s eerily relevant and while historical fiction, it oddly felt dystopian. I was fascinated to learn of this historic event known as the Dancing Plague of 1518 and taken by the story of these women who in their own way dance to their own music. Vamos por partes: gostei da escrita da autora. É cativante, mas custou-me um pouco ler este livro. Tem um ritmo lento e arrastado, é um livro muito sofrido a vários níveis. Hargrave notes that incidents of choreomania were – if not common – recurrent in Medieval times, rationalised as religious mania, and what seems to me to be the nub of this novel is the fact that ‘[o]ften, the dancers were society’s most vulnerable, whether through class, age, race, or gender.’

The story of her birth is the story of a comet. At the moment Gepa Bauer’s mother felt the first pain of her coming, her papa saw it, a burning star ripping the dark sky for three days while her mother laboured on all fours like a beast, her husband and sons sleeping in the barn because they were scared of her pain, of the blood, of the wise woman who came with sweet mallow and iron tongs. To the east, the comet found a farmer’s field and scorched it fully, furrowed so deep those who were there said it was like a tunnel to Hell carved in the soil. As it tore the ground, Gepa was born feet first and the agony broke her mother’s mind.’ Reading this book,I learned so much that I never even heard of. There are many different theories to this day as to what started the dancing plaque in 1518 in Strasbourg ranging from tainted rye in the bread to curses to hot blood. I'm amazed that this even happened! The most common theory is that they were cursed by St. Vistus (The god of dancing) for whatever sin they committed. Read the Authors Notes to find out more and what other centuries the dancing plaque occurred in. I found my patience for sentimental historical fiction, even the kind that is well-written and not cheesy WWII romance crap, had disappeared.

In Strasbourg, July of 1518, a woman named Frau Traoffea began to dance constantly for a week straight without stopping. Soon hundreds of women joined her. These women danced uncontrollably and apparently unwilling for about two months straight. They were in some kind of trance. Very sadly before it was over in August 1518 over 400 had died. What started this dancing plaque? Why did it only affect women? It was the hottest summer in years and remember that in these times, it was full of superstitions, mystics and the church was corrupt. Crime was everywhere and there were many pagan rituals driving people from their homes into the forest. They believed that God and the Devil were vengeful and ready to punish you for your sins. It takes an age, but Lisbet is revived from her sleep, and she works as though she had practised for just this moment her whole life, a life that until now had been full of ruin and curses and blood and now is nothing but music and beauty and bees, her mother-in-law processing before her, anointing her path with smoke. She feels some of the power a priest must, giving each animal their place, clearing them of their panic, their confusion. Giving them peace. The unhomed bees gust and plume, making a column above the destroyed hives.’ In her research KMH has relied on the study by John Waller A Time to Dance, who proposes the theory that the economic and social pressures of the time, when religion became a major source of controversy and violence, where the ultimate causes for the mass-dementia. The writing here is elegant and the author’s poetic sensibilities are obvious in her prose. It’s an evocative book to read with both emotions and events described in elegant language. Some of the characters are perhaps a bit hemmed in by their purpose in the story, but that is a minor quibble that is probably more related to the fact that I rarely read historical fiction and read this in an attempt to broaden my reading horizons.

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Strasbourg, 1518, where the Religious Council of 21 aligns themselves as God, and will punish anyone who steps out of line in their eyes. Their intention is to oppress women and nature, and steal anything that makes money in a time of hunger and starvation.

Agnethe and the other side characters as also excellently sketched out, and all together Hargrave's writing portrays a vivid picture of the era and its people, with excellent use of imagery and language.The writing in this book is filled with descriptive and lyrical prose and I found it very captivating. It’s a story of female friendship, loss and forbidden love. It’s set in the year 1518 and based on a true story. Set in an era of superstition and hysteria, and inspired by the true events of a doomed summer, The Dance Tree is a story of family secrets, forbidden love, and women pushed to the edge. The gripping, historical novel from Kiran Millwood Hargrave, as seen on BBC Two's Between the Covers.