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The Return

Dancing through danger

Victoria Hislop
Headline, 420pp, £17.99,

Olivia Cole

Wednesday, 9th July 2008

Olivia Cole on Victoria Hislop’s second novel

The Return opens in Granada (site of a long and bloody stalemate in the Civil War) but the action is as dispersed as the characters, through whose chaotic journeys we see the fall of city after city, as women are urged to be ‘the widows of heroes, not the wives of cowards’. The conflict provides a convincing backdrop to Mercedes’ and her gitane accompanist Javier’s love story — and their inability to pay attention to a reality less seductive than their own. But when life’s horrors become impossible to ignore, Mercedes’ experiences begin to give genuine power to the gaudy neon signs pulsing with the promise of dance as a means of survival.

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Rita

October 20th, 2008 2:28am

Just amazing, this story!

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