Retrieve Leading The Dance Developed By Sarah Salway Rendered As Print

I were British, I'd say that these stories are deliciously wicked, . . Salway is completely psychotic in the most charming way possible, Some books, more specifically short story collections, are like a box of chocolates, You never know what you're going to get, And I found myself thinking this about Leading The Dance, by Sarah Salway this week,

You see, I never read the stories in collections in order, I don't know why, I just don't, Last week, after many weeks of dipping in to it, I realised that sadly I was nearing the end, I probably only had one or two stories left to read, though, as I'd not read it in order, I didn't know how many,


So, like those last few chocolates in a box you've really loved, I tried to save them, You know, as a treat, I didn't want to be greedy and scoff them all in no time, And I didn't want to lift the lid and see how many or few I had left, I wanted to enjoy them, And enjoy them I did but, . .

The box is empty now, and I'm disappointed,

I want more,

I loved the first book Something Beginning With of Sarah's I read, And I love this, I think, as much, It is, I think, the best collection of short stories I've read, It's delicate and tender in places, and heart twistingly sad in others, It's not short on laughs either, And if there's one thing that's present right the way through the book it's the uncanny way that you can empathise with or recognise almost all of the characters,

It is expertly written and hugely enjoyable, The prose sparkles mostly, while at times it is nothing short of dazzling, And touching.

A fantastic collection,

from sitelink blogspot. com"Quiet Hour" is one of my favorite stories, Elegant, insightful stories. See my blog review: sitelink blogspot. com/ The stories in Sarah Salways collection Leading the Dance recently republished in a new edition are

built from elements that are ostensibly largely quotidian, but often treated in a way that lays bare the significance that everyday things can have to people.
Lets start with the title story, which is a fine illustration of this as well as being one of my favourite pieces in the book it tells of a couple attending a school ceilidh, but also of the tensions running through their relationship.
The man is quickly and chillingly established as a threatening figure For a child to cry during one of Daddys moods is not a good thing because then hell teach them how it really feels to hurt, p.
he attends the ceilidh only reluctantly, and makes sure his partner, Deborah, knows that for Deborahs part, she knows how destructive is this relationship, but still finds herself drawn to the man who is not named, thereby depersonalising him and emphasising the sense of his being a threat.
The act of leading the dance comes to represent the struggle to exert control over the relationship Salway superbly maintains a sense of menace throughout,

Some of the tales gain their effect from a quirk of the viewpoint interacting with plot events, Quiet Hour is rich in dramatic irony: its child protagonist, Malcolm, waits in his fathers new car and investigates what all the buttons do hes not aware of the implications of his fathers comment that Mummy and I are going to have a little sleep p. nor of why his usual tactics for good behaviour are not working at the end but the reader is, which results in a very entertaining story,

Alphabet Wednesdays uses its structure as well as its voice to put distance between the reader and its underlying reality, Flora is unable or unwilling to talk, and has been placed in a special group with three other girls at school, which aims to raise their selfesteem, The girls have been asked to keep a journal about their role models, each to begin with a different letter of the alphabet the text of the story is that of Floras journal.
At first, its quite amusing to read Floras naive voice describing a series of apparently disconnected subjects, but the difficulties of Floras home life the extent of which she herself is not fully aware gradually become clear when Flora writes about dancing to Gloria Gaynor, we sense the additional weight of what her mother always says: We can do itWe can survive” p.
.

Elsewhere in Leading the Dance are stories where the situation depicted is more extraordinary, The narrator of The Woman Downstairs describes matteroffactly how she pushed a visitor down the cellar stairs, and now keeps her trapped there, Precisely what is going on here is uncertain there are hints that the captive woman may be a figment of the protagonists imagination but, whatever the situation, its clear that the narrator is struggling to cope with reality.
Salway evokes the characters mindset subtly yet thoroughly,

In Painting the Family Pet, a portrait painter arrives on Helens doorstep Amy Turner paints pets, but there are no animals in this household, so she ends up painting the fridge instead.
Its an absurd situation, but Salway makes it work, partly by treating it with complete conviction within the story, but also by giving it metaphoric import we learn that Helen has bulimia, and the fridge and its portrait come to represent something of the effect her condition has had on Helens relationship with her partner Dan.
As with the title story, the events of this tale carry greater significance than they might seem to on their own terms,

By covering five pieces out of eighteen, Im in a sense only scratching the surface of the collection but I hope Ive managed to give a flavour of why Leading the Dance is such an interesting set of stories.
Leading the Dance is a collection of short stories, bound together by the concept of secrets within everyday life, Sarah manges to write colourful charcters, and fascinating tales, all presented within a few pages, something that I believe takes great writing skill,

Some of my pesonal highlights include a woman who has a portrait done of the contents of her fridge, which seems amusing, but deals with bulimia a wife who secretly follows her husbands affair via his emails a touching tale of two sisters and their loneliness a boy who has been taught to ignore his mothers afternoon visitors and especially the woman who locks another woman in her basement!

I can honestly say that not one tale within this collection disappointed, and Im sure everyone will find their own personal favourite.
Despite being very short, each one seems to have depth, and I will certainly be going back to read them again,

I very much enjoyed Sarahs voice, and the way she writes, and I will be actively hunting more of her work, My first experience of reading Sarah Salway despite having followed her blog for some time, I'd been harbouring her books, waiting for the right time to start, and now it's come, thankfully I wasn't disappointed,

I don't find short stories the easiest form, But if they were all like this I think I'd like them much more, Nearly all of these read like actual stories, they had a point, a development, Something actually happened. None read like exercises or anecdotes,

But the best thing was that all were at least a little strange, a little warped, Peopled by people carrying secrets or dark desires in their hearts, Put all these people together in a town and you'd have a very odd place, but equally at a quick glance it could appear utterly normal, These people have genuine quirks, the kind that real people do, It's just that Salway takes time to notice them and bring them to light, Some funny, some sad. All very human. I felt at home among her cast,

Now, I can't wait to see what her novels deliver, a bit too 'look at me I'm so clever' I thought this was an amazing collection of short stories, The tales really stayed with me days later, The story of the housewife with an eating disorder and the strange petartist who paints a portrait of her fridge is wonderfully surreal, but simply inspired,

I can't recommend enough, Secrets and their consequences run deep through Sarah Salway's short stories in this haunting and sharply written collection, A bored housewife welcomes the nomadic painter of family pets into her home and commissions a portrait of her fridge a schoolboy learns how to survive when his gang turns against him a man's life is turned around when he hears his wife make a new noise in bed, and in the title story, a dance between husband and wife at a school ceilidh turns into a battle for survival.
This is domestic life turned on its head, with Salway's witty and economic prose capturing the private moments of transformation by some very different characters on the edge, I am still reading this but so far excellent, Went on a course and Sarah recently and she was an excellent tutor and has really converted me to short stories, Sarah Salway is a poet, novelist and journalist, She is the author of three novels, including Something Beginning With, and the poetry collection, You Do Not Need Another Self Help Book, She is currently the Canterbury Laureate and the Chair of the Kent Sussex Poetry Society, .