A Company of Swans
by Eva Ibbotson.
Young Picador, 2008 (1985).
“My aim is to produce books that are light, humorous, even a little erudite, but secure in their happy endings. One could call it an attempt to write, in words, a good Viennese waltz!” — Eva Ibbotson.
With a title that directly references Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake and a plot that also involves performances of The Nutcracker, La Fille Mal Gardée and Giselle, Ibbotson’s romance is clearly focused on the dance world, and her descriptions of exercises, dance moves and the plots of classical ballets securely anchor the reader there.
But this is also a tale set at the end of the Edwardian era, at a time when great changes were about to take place in the world: Europe in 1912 was scant years away from a devastating war, and in Brazil the riches made from a monopoly in rubber were about to receive a severe dent from rubber seeds smuggled out of the Amazon jungle to East Asia via Kew Gardens.
Young Harriet Morton has more pressing concerns, however: her widowed father, a Cambridge professor, is an unimaginative and stern pedant and her aunt – a stickler for propriety like her brother – restricts Harriet’s activities so much that only ballet remains as an outlet for her sensibilities. When the chance to join a corps de ballet performing in the Amazon jungle presents itself, can she – will she – take the opportunity, desert her captors and join the company of swans?
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Calmgrove Books 