An enjoyable historical fiction read, set in Strasbourg in 1518 during the 'dancing' plague. I loved The Mercies by Kiran Milwood Hargrave and couldn't wait to read her next adult novel. She writes beautifully and makes you feel so much for her characters. It feels so unjust that women had to live like this and the horrific rules they had to follow. I admired Lisbet's strength through The Dance Tree and what she overcame.

I also enjoy that she picks historical periods and places that you rarely read about in other historical novels. I love reading historical fiction because of what you learn about a time period was no exception. The occasional end of chapters about the women dancing and their lives and reasons were some of my favourite in the book.

I definitely would recommend for fans of historical fiction.

A period of history I knew nothing about and more oppression of women. I found the whole atmosphere grim and can't imagine the stench of that horribly hot summer. Very gloomy and I guessed the secret immediately, as it seems to be a theme. But the writing is superb and, if I found it uncomfortable reading, that's down to the skill of author. But I'd like something lighter to read now!

Kiran Millwood Hargrave explores similar themes in this novel to The Mercies; forbidden same-sex relationships, misogyny and patriarchy. This time it is set in 1518 with the intriguing historical interweaving of the dancing plague or mania that caused 15 deaths a day of exhaustion. It is fascinating that this seems to have only affected women.
Additionally we have the heart-wrenching story of Lisbet, who has miscarried numerous times and is hoping to bring to term her latest baby. This is a theme close to the author’s heart, having experienced this traumatic event themselves. She is the linchpin to the tale and her growing relationship with Eren, a Turkish musician, is memorable.
I am grateful to Kiran for telling these stories of people “who live, look or love a different way”.

This novel takes us to Strasbourg in 1518 where the summer is stifling and life is harsh. In the city choreomania has taken hold and women have began to dance uncontrollably. Seen through the eyes of Lisbet living in the countryside, pregnant for the 13th time and making a living tending to the bees, we witness the treatment of women by men and religion and the toll this takes. The phenomenon is depicted with care and the horror and brutality of the times are not avoided.

Deeply unsettling at points, this novel takes us to a time and place when women were stifled, ridiculed and abused, and yet there is hope and moments of joy between the main female characters. There is enough backstory to guide us to the positions of the women and to explain their situations, and their relationships with each other are a balm in their difficult world.

This novel deals with a lot but with sensitivity and respect. Themes include the loss of babies, miscarriage and still birth, mental health, torture and abuse. The subordination of women and resulting self-blame accounts for the protagonist’s view of the world and events that happen.

This book is wholesome, deeply caring and an exceptional read. I absolutely recommend it. Many thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this novel, I’ll not forget it in hurry.

Having read and enjoyed The Girl of Ink and Stars, I was intrigued to pick up this adult novel.

We are taken to Strasbourg in 1518. The weather is sweltering with no sign of a break, and a strange mania has hit the city. It started with a single woman dancing with abandon in the city square and then more and more joined them, with the town leaders, the Twenty One declare that the devil must be danced out of these women.

On the outskirts of the city, Lisbet, who is pregnant, lives with her husband, Henne, and her mother-in-law, Sophey. The are awaiting the return of Henne's sister, Agnethe, who was sent away from the home for an unnamed sin to do penance to an Abbey in the mountains for seven years. Lisbet's friend, Ida, lives close by and this book is the story of these four women in a society where men rule.

The central character is Lisbet. She has lost so many babies in the past and so is fearful of the child she is now carrying. Her main role is beekeeper, looking after the family hives and collecting the honey, and beeswax which which she makes candles. It is these two products that the family trade. She has never felt that her mother-in-law has accepted her and with the arrival of her sister-in-law, the family dynamics will change.

These four women try to resist all attempts to control them, the dancing women are being contained and these four resist. There is violence towards women in this novel and not just the physical abuse. Some scenes are really hard to read.

What really sets this novel apart is the language, it is beautiful and poetic - the descriptions of the woods and the bees are just wonderful and transport you to almost another world. As for the women, each one of them elicits our sympathy. This is not a safe time for anyone who does not follow the rules of the Twenty One, who love and act outside the expected boundaries.

I loved this. Thank you Netgalley and Pan MacMillan for allowing me to read this.

I fell in love with Kieran’s writing through her children’s book “Julia and the Shark”, and whilst this is an adult novel and so not comparable, I was super excited to get the chance to read it.

The very idea of a dancing fever seems absurdly fictional, and yet it was a true thing that happened in the 1500s; it was a really interesting inspiration.

I’ll be honest, this is not an easy book to read, with some difficult and controversial subjects (not surprising when it’s set over 500 years ago, there was a different thinking as to what was acceptable discussion and what wasn’t) - miscarriage, mania, death and grief, homophobia, religion and blasphemy, racism, violence - but I think the inclusion of these topics add to the power of the story.

One thing I really admire about Kieran’s writing is that, whilst the story might be slightly abstract and not instantly familiar to readers (in my opinion), her character creation is perfect. The ‘heroes’ and the ‘villains’ and everyone in between; they’re flaws and scared and brave and loving, and above all, recognisably human.

Whilst her writing has always been commendable, I think it is more polished in this book more certain. It’s like poetry the way Kiran has formed the narrative, and whilst some of the subject matter may be hard to read, the actual forming of the words and sentences is anything but.

Whilst women in the 16th Century were treated as almost second-class citizens, I feel that our main female protagonists are brave and strong and more than capable of standing up for themselves in a world ruled by men.

Whilst it’s not necessary for you to know about the true dancing fever to enjoy this book (I only knew the bare minimum), I do think this book would be very interesting for history lovers. It provides knowledge, entertainment, emotion, and heart.

A beautifully written book. Really enjoyed reading this. Thanks to publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to read

Strasbourg 1518 in the midst of a heatwave & the book opens with a real event: Frau Troffea who starts to dance in the town square, she is unable to stop despite her sore & bloodied feet.
The story weaves around this horrific event as more women join the ‘dance’ & The Twenty-One (the group of men who rule the town) attempt barbaric methods to stop them.
Lisbet, pregnant at last after many miscarriages, is left to mind the bees on her in-laws farm as her husband travels to Heidelberg to attempt to stop the Twenty One taking his livelihood.
Whilst he is away his sister returns from serving 7 years penance but is reluctant to talk about her experience (to be fair her ‘crime’ is pretty obvious!)
A tale of forbidden love, solidarity, sisterhood, of inequality & prejudice.
A fabulous read - set around true events.

This book was based on a true event. That is always a good place to start to get my attention. Kiran Millwood Hargrave is one of my favourite authors so I was thrilled to be given an advance copy of this book. The tale is fleshed out by the author to great success and in places you really want to look away from the action and then realise this is probably exactly what happened. It is fascinating and disturbing all at the same time. A great read.

What a beautiful, troubling, tragic, extraordinary book this is! Set in the 1500s in Alsace, near to Strasbourg, it is the story surrounding a mysterious true historical event, where a woman started dancing with complete abandon, following some sort of inner voice, then many other women joined her and the event became a disturbing episode for rulers, church and everyone around them. That this took place at a time where women were appallingly treated seems to have passed by the rulers of the time, and their brutality in dealing with this outburst is well documented.

The book is exhaustively researched, and the characters are as real as if they are in the room - the mark of a very fine writer in my opinion. Add to that a wonderful sense of place and a cracking good story and you have a recipe for a spellbinding and moving read. The writer doesn’t hold back on brutal details, but that just makes the writing more vivid and the story more real. A book for lovers of fine writing and perplexing historical occurrences.

Having enjoyed Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s previous book, The Mercies, I was looking forward to reading more of her work. This new novel, The Dance Tree, sounded very different, but equally intriguing. It’s set in 16th century Strasbourg during a plague of dancing – yes, dancing, which sounds harmless but, as the novel shows, is anything but.

The Dance Tree begins in 1518 and introduces us to Lisbet, a young pregnant woman, who lives with her husband and mother-in-law. Lisbet has already lost several babies and is determined to carry this one to full term; while her pregnancy advances she finds comfort in looking after the bees that provide the family’s livelihood and visiting the tree she has decorated in memory of her lost children. One day, Lisbet’s sister-in-law, Agnethe, comes home from the nunnery where she has been doing penance for the last seven years; Lisbet has no idea what the sin was that resulted in Agnethe being sent away, but she does know that her return has changed the dynamics within the household and that life will not be quite the same again.

Meanwhile, in the centre of Strasbourg, Frau Troffea walks into a market square, lifts up her hands and begins to dance. She is soon joined by more women…and more…and more, all of them dancing until the soles of their feet bleed. As the women continue to dance day after day – a desperate, frenzied dance that shows no sign of coming to an end – the authorities try to bring them under control, without success.

I knew nothing about the dancing plague before reading this book, so I found that aspect of the novel fascinating. Many theories have been put forward over the years to explain why the women danced, ranging from demonic possession or religious trance to ergot poisoning or mass hysteria. Even today, historians don’t know for sure what was behind the epidemic, but to help us understand some of the possible reasons, Kiran Millwood Hargrave provides back stories for some of the individual dancers. These stories are presented as brief chapters interspersed between Lisbet’s chapters, and although I thought they could have been better integrated into the novel as a whole, they were interesting to read.

I liked Lisbet and had a lot of sympathy for her situation, and also for her best friend, Ida, who is married to a controlling bully who belongs to the ‘Twenty One’, the group of men who rule the city. Agnethe is another intriguing character, although I found the reason for her seven-year penance too easy to guess. However, despite finding the characters interesting, I didn’t manage to form the deep emotional connection with any of them that I would have liked. I’m not sure why this should be, because Hargrave does write beautifully, except that I often find the use of present tense very distancing and I think that was the case here.

Although I didn’t love this book as much as I hoped, I would recommend Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s books to readers interested in historical fiction dealing with women’s lives in unusual settings and circumstances – in this book, the Strasbourg dancing plague, and in The Mercies, the witch trials on the Norwegian island of Vardø.

Haunting and beautiful in equal measure…. A story with the power to move readers in every possible way….

I thought the book was well-written, though for me it lacked a distinctive voice, and the characters weren't particularly fleshed out or likeable. The exception for me was Eren, who I did love, and I wish the narrative and other characters were kinder to him.
I'm not usually one for historical novels, but I found the setting of this novel intricately developed and well-researched. I neither had to wade through descriptions of things I didn't understand nor did I feel that characters were particularly 'ahead of their time' as though they were from the 21st century and dropped into a time that they weren't a product of. While it wasn't particularly pleasant to read, Lisbet and Sophey's belief that homosexuality is a sin while still loving their friend/daughter as a human being, felt authentic.
I'm still on the fence about whether this book should be marketed as an LGBT novel, because while it features characters who love others of their same gender, and explores the consequences of being attracted to the same gender in the sixteenth century, this is all explored from an outside perspective as Lisbet, the novel's protagonist and narrator, isn't a lesbian or bisexual herself. I could have connected with the characters more if the story featured chapters from Nethe or Ida's perspectives, as since the story was told entirely through Lisbet's voice, I could see that Nethe and Ida loved each other, but I didn't feel it. There was little chemistry between them. If not for the set up of Lisbet finding a lock of Ida's hair amongst Nethe's possessions, I would have presumed Lisbet and Nethe were to have the romantic arc of the novel.
It took me a long time to get into this book, and while in the end I did enjoy it, it's not a novel I would read again. One thing I did like, even from the start, is how the chapters of Lisbet's story are interspaced with very short chapters featuring the stories of the women dancing.

Who knew there was a dance plague in the 1500s? I certainly didn't until I read "The Dance Tree" by Kiran Milwood Hargrave. Certainly an interesting period of history to write about coupled with the personal narrative of Lisbet and her tragic miscarriages, remembered by tying ribbons of fabric to a dance tree.

Kiran Millwood-Hargrave constantly surprises me with her writing, and highlighting while she is an auto-buy author. I love the human aspect that Kiran portrays in her writing, and it almost feels like we know the characters in her story. There were some issues with the e-galley, but that didn't take anything away from the story itself.

Gorgeous, heartbreaking and full of a fierce sort of hope. Abandoned everything I had planned today to read this instead and I don't regret it at all.

Hargrave's previous novel The Mercies is one of my favourite books of all time, and I was so keen to read her next adult book. Its historical fiction based on a true story, like her previous novel. Its beautifully written, with incredible characters and so much heartbreak and sadness, but it's never too much because of the gorgeous writing. I will read every single Hargrave book as long as she writes them, I know I'll never be disappointed.

Lisbet, Ida and Agnethe are women caught up in the poverty, desperation, misogyny and religious oppression of the early 16th century in Strasbourg (now part of modern-day France). Their lives are totally dominated by men, whether they are father, brother, husband or religious and political leaders. Lisbet has recently married Henne and been brought to live in his house with himself and his mother but the few years they have been together has been marred by her inability to carry a child full term so her love is given to the bees she tends for the family’s income. Henne’s sister then returns home shaved and malnourished after 5 years of ‘penance’ in the mountains, the reason for which she won’t speak of. Ida has been Lisbet’s best friend since her marriage and she tries hard not to be jealous of her brood of children, but she also has sympathy for her, married to a bullying brute who is also a member of the rule enforcing ‘Twenty One’.

One day a woman starts dancing in the square. It is a wild abandoned dance and she will not stop to eat or rest. Her feet start bleeding and yet she still will not stop. More women join her in her tormented gyrations and the authorities are at a loss about what to do.

Like her first adult novel, The Mercies, this is also based on a true story. The Dance Plague of 1518 is well documented and theories ranged from religious mania and demonic possession to food poisoning or madness. Even modern scholars don’t understand fully the hysteria that began suddenly and finally stopped a few months later. Accounts of a ‘dancing plague’ are recorded as happening in many parts of Europe around this time.
I was totally absorbed in this visceral and graphic account of life at this time, especially for women. The best comparison I feel is Jessie Burton (The Miniaturist) with a dash of Hannah Kent. It would make a good book club book. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Kiran Millwood Hargrave's books are always highly recommended so I was really excited to read this Net Galley ARC. The Dance Tree is strong, well-written modern historical fiction set in Strasbourg 1518 , which opens with pregnant Lisbet and her husband Henne anticipating the arrival of his sister Nethe back into their lives after a spell of penance in a nunnery for an unknown sin. Lisbet is a quiet soul who has suffered many miscarriages and finds refuge in keeping the bees that provide their livelihood. She struggles to understand the reason why the family are so hostile to Nethe's return and what the secret is that put her there.
Nethe's return proves a catalyst that changes everything. At the same time, a plague or mania of dancing women begins in the city and this eventually becomes a threatening force to the TwentIy One , a council of men who run the area as more and more women become entranced in this. When Lisbet's husband has to travel away she is forced to draw on her own reserves and this begins a journey of self-discovery for her.
This is a sensual read and I found myself really feeling and seeing everything in the text, the writing is beautiful. Many themes in women's lives are covered, what makes a mother, the pain of miscarriage, sexuality, madness, superstition, people who are other...there is quite lot going on. This could perhaps be one of the small things that I would change, it might have benefited from being more streamlined and I sometimes wanted Lisbet to be stronger and for her story to be focused on more but all in all it's a beautiful, clever novel set during a very different time and is extremely page-turning.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4525570253

I took a very long time to get into this book, at the start the only part that I was really enjoying was the dancing segments and I wasn't that interested in the main characters or the plot at all until about halfway through the book. While towards the end of the book I still didn't care all that much about what the characters were doing I did care about them as people.