A review by willkay
The Dancer Upstairs by Nicholas Shakespeare

5.0

The Dancer Upstairs by Nicholas Shakespeare

What happens when you read a book, love a book, think it is wonderful but have real difficulty recommending it? Well, you have probably just read The Dancer Upstairs.

The author has taken a true story about Abimael Guzmán (and for those of you who have never heard about Guzmán [that would include me 24 hours ago] you really should read about him) and turned it into a work of fiction - all the names have been changed to protect the innocent guilty.

It is about one man's search for the leader of a revolution, a revolution to overthrow the Peruvian government. It is also a love story (although it is unrequited love) and a story about politics. And that makes it sound fairly boring but it isn't.

I enjoyed the book because I am, at the moment, trying to get a mind-set on the way Mexicans think. This book is actually set in Perú which is, of course, South America rather than being North American. However many of the stories told about Peruvian costumes help to understand some of the stories Maria has told me about Ancient Mexico. She has told me of two tribes who would fight every year with the express purpose of taking 100 prisoners from each tribe. These prisoners would then be sacrificed to Mother Nature so that the rains would come. When she told me this I stored the idea in the back of my mind thinking - ah, ancient times. In The Dancer Upstairs the police officer recounts the time as a child (so mid 1900s) when two villages would go to up the mountains and have a snowball fight until one child fell down a precipice and died. This would happen every year and no-one talked about it.

From a personal point of view I would give this book 5 stars, I found the book exceptionally well written, well paced and totally involving. However I would probably not recommend it to anyone unless they have an unlimited budget and endless time to read books. If you have it on your shelf, pick it up now and read it. If you come across it at a car-boot sale, pick it up and put it on your shelf for a rainy day.