Since listening to an episode of ‘This Podcast will Kill You’ about the Dancing Plague of 1518 (which incidentally I really recommend listening to alongside reading this book to give you the back story) I have been fascinated by the this story. So when I saw Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s next adult novel centred around these events I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it.

In the midst of the hottest summer Central Europe has known, Frau Troffea begins to dance
“She is crying, but she is not ashamed”
“The light tickles her beneath the chin. Frau Troffea tilts her head back, looks at the sun until her eyes fill with white. The light swirls about her like a cloud, buffeting her gentle as a wind-knocked sail. She picks up her foot, then the other. Her hips sway she parts her lips in ecstasy.
Beneath the blue and burning sky, Frau Troffea lifts up her hands, and begins to dance”

Set around this backdrop, the Dancing Tree focusses on Lisbet, pregnant having suffered multiple losses, living with her mother in law and husband. As the story starts, her sister in law returns from being banished for seven years, for reasons that no one will share with Lisbet.

Millwood Hargrave’s writing is stunningly beautiful, it describes the time and place so vividly, and I felt so connected to Lisbet. Themes of religion and superstition, the struggle of living in a deeply patriarchal society, love, loss, LBGTQ+ stories and family are all wound together. I don’t always enjoy historical fiction but all of these different elements and how relevant they still are kept me enthralled, I devoured this book within a couple of days.

I cannot recommend this book enough, I think it’s going to stay with me for a long time.
Thank you to the author, Picador and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this incredible book.

4+

There was not a doubt in my mind, that I would enjoy this book.
This is an author I'll buy without reading the blurb.
It doesn't disappoint.
A bstory I knew nothing about,the dancing plague sets a nice under current of tension, whilst the lives of one family, and their friends are played out front.
It's emotional at times, touching at others... its a gem throughout.

It's going to be in my top reads of the year of that I'm certain.

This was such a good book. I love historical fiction, especially when it is about eras/ situations that I previously knew nothing about and this was definitely one of those books. It was so well researched and so compelling in its narrative that not only did I love reading it but I felt that I learned too. A really enjoyable read and perfect for any fans of historical fiction.

<b> <i>The Dance Tree</i> by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (2022)</b>

In an author’s note at the end of this version of the novel, Kiran Millwood Hargrave outlines the sphere of her interest:

<blockquote>‘In July 1518, in the midst of the hottest summer Central Europe had ever known, a woman whose name is recorded as Frau Troffea began to dance in the streets of Strasbourg. This was no ordinary dance – it was unrelenting, closer to a trance than a celebration. She danced for days, any attempts to make her rest thwarted, until it drew the attention of the Twenty-One, the city’s council, and she was taken to the shrine of St Vitus, patron saint of dancers and musicians. After being bathed in the spring there, she stopped dancing.’</blockquote>

Hargrave notes that incidents of choreomania were – if not common – recurrent in Medieval times, rationalised as <i>religious mania</i>, and what seems to me to be the nub of this novel is the fact that ‘[o]ften, the dancers were society’s most vulnerable, whether through class, age, race, or gender.’

What we get in Hargrave’s second novel for adults is <b>a story of four women</b>, centred around Lisbet, a beekeeper, childless but pregnant for the thirteenth time, and a story of how these four women (Lisbet with her mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and closest friend) resist men’s attempts to supress them, confine them, to crush them as the Twenty-One seek to nullify the dancing women:

<blockquote>‘He goes whistling through the house, closing the door a little too loudly. Lisbet has always marvelled at this habit in men […]. How they move through the world so loudly, so unashamedly, without thought for who hears them, or if they disturb others.’</blockquote>

<blockquote>‘What must it be, to be a man and be able to leave your grief behind, or else shrink it small enough to carry about in a pocket, and bear it enough to live a different life?’</blockquote>

I haven’t read ‘The Girl of Ink and Stars’ (2016) or ‘The Island at the End of Everything’ (2017) by Kiran Millwood Hargrave; I jumped in at ‘The Deathless Girls’ (2019), mostly attracted by its fantastic cover artwork. However, I found this YA novel lacklustre, straining for the Gothic and not quite achieving it. It came across as too voyeuristic; as though the reader was on the outside of the story, looking in. So, I will confess that I haven’t always been a fan of the author. I somewhat enjoyed ‘The Mercies’ (2020), but found I was unsettled with the ending of that, the author’s first novel for adults, and could never really root for the characters. The turning point was when I casually picked up ‘The Way Past Winter’ (2018): the writing was full of vitality and the characters wonderfully engaging. With that, I embraced Hargrave’s style, and when ‘Julia and the Shark’ was released last year, I gobbled it up immediately, ordered myself a copy of ‘A Secret of Birds & Bone’ (2020), and I jumped at the chance of reading her second novel for adults.

<b>Here, we find Hargrave’s voice polished and practised</b>; words flow into passages, pages into chapters, and the narrative spills and pools like honey overrunning from Lisbet's bee combs. The writing in ‘The Dance Tree’ is just gorgeous:

<blockquote>‘The king rises from the remains of his hive, buzzing enormously. He sways, bumbles against Lisbet’s cheek. She feels the graze of his wing, light as broken cobwebs, and then he lifts higher and is encased inside his colony. The bees rise with him as though he is an anchor made air, as though their tethers are suddenly cut, and they follow him into the forest.’</blockquote>

I imagine that the author has been able to bring this novel to life so richly because it echoes her personal experience. Hargrave is an outspoken advocate for family mental health, particularly following pregnancy loss. She speaks openly on social media about her struggles to carry children to term. <b>Hargrave is recording here what she knows</b>. Perhaps I felt that when she was writing previously about vampire brides, or the Vardø Witch Trials, there was too much research cluttering the space between the work and the reader. But that changed with ‘Julia and the Shark’, where she writes about mental illness; and in her short story, <i>Confinement,</i> in the anthology ‘The Haunting Season’ (2021), where she is writing about post-natal depression. These are subjects with intense significance for the author. Thus, they spark off the page. There is breath and pulse and life when Hargrave writes of them. And the same is true with ‘The Dance Tree’:

<blockquote>‘The story of her birth is the story of a comet. At the moment Gepa Bauer’s mother felt the first pain of her coming, her papa saw it, a burning star ripping the dark sky for three days while her mother laboured on all fours like a beast, her husband and sons sleeping in the barn because they were scared of her pain, of the blood, of the wise woman who came with sweet mallow and iron tongs. To the east, the comet found a farmer’s field and scorched it fully, furrowed so deep those who were there said it was like a tunnel to Hell carved in the soil. As it tore the ground, Gepa was born feet first and the agony broke her mother’s mind.’</blockquote>

<b>This new novel is muscular, strong and wieldy</b>. I found the characters gripping from the very first page. That sounds like hyperbole, but it isn’t. One of the pleasures of this novel is how action-driven the plot is, even if it’s only the action of Lisbet stretching her back, or the women eating side-by-side.

<b>The dialogue, too, is full and resonant</b>; Hargrave’s character portrayal is splendid in this respect. There are points when a character’s speech made me gasp aloud. Hargrave’s observational powers shine from the whole cast. There is not one extraneous character here. The relationship between Lisbet and her confidante Ida is beautifully written right from the start, tender and engaging. That between Lisbet and Agnethe, her sister-in-law, is perfectly enthralling; their pieces of dialogue together are some of the finest writing in the novel. Some of the dancing women themselves are given brief biographies that pepper the narrative between chapters, and this device serves effectively to seize tension and pull the reader through to the next scene, or – in some cases – to deepen our sympathy or empathy.

Nor is there any superfluous scene in ‘The Dancing Tree’; midway, I feared there just wasn’t going to be enough of this gorgeous book to enjoy. <b>The timing is delicately paced and very well pitched</b>, as Lisbet, and the women who surround her, move through revelations of who they truly are, and metamorphose into new-found selves; with character arc illustrated symbolically throughout by what happens to Lisbet’s bees:

<blockquote>‘It takes an age, but Lisbet is revived from her sleep, and she works as though she had practised for just this moment her whole life, a life that until now had been full of ruin and curses and blood and now is nothing but music and beauty and bees, her mother-in-law processing before her, anointing her path with smoke. She feels some of the power a priest must, giving each animal their place, clearing them of their panic, their confusion. Giving them peace. The unhomed bees gust and plume, making a column above the destroyed hives.’</blockquote>

<b>Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s writing in ‘The Dance Tree’ overall is taut, crafted, considered</b>. There are a few spelling mistakes here and there (vice instead of vise no less than 3 times) and some oddly phrased sentences, grammar-wise, but this is an ARC and I’m hoping these will be repaired in the finished copy.

This is one of those mesmerising reads that you feel utterly scooped-out and empty after finishing. Beautiful:

<blockquote>‘This time he plays something lovely and low, more mournful than what he lulled the bees with. It is a keen with the edges smoothed, an unmistakeable lament. Lisbet closes her eyes again, and leans back against the trunk. She lets herself drift, lets her thoughts wander, and it makes her remember. She remembers the first child she carried, and the second. They come to her, each of her children, spooling from the music like spirits: bodies of light, souls of god.’</blockquote>

There is violence here: violence towards women, violence of hate; verbal abuse and emotional abuse. But the text is redemptive, and – I like to hope – not through a solely hetero-centric resolution. ‘The Mercies’ also suffered somewhat from the Bury Your Gays trope / Dead Lesbian Syndrome, where LGBT+ relationships are frustrated or denied fulfilment, either through death or permanent separation. However, Hargrave does conclude in her remarkably tender author’s note:

<blockquote>'It’s easy to draw lines from then to now in attitudes to the LGBT+ community, to immigrants, to class. We have come so far, and not nearly far enough. […] The world-at-large remains too often a hostile place for people who live, look, or love a different way. In The Dance Tree, I wanted to offer my characters a place to be safe and themselves. […] Lisbet is my attempt to offer a mirror to anyone else struggling to see themselves, and a window to those who might need the insight.'</blockquote>

My thanks are due to Pan Macmillan for an ARC through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

As a fan of well researched historical fiction, including The Mercies, the author’s previous book, I was delighted to have the opportunity to read this advance copy. The story is based around a true event: the 1518 Dancing Plague at Strasbourg where citizens danced uncontrollably for about two months. The author skilfully weaves her story around this intriguing phenomenon, introducing us to Lisbet a young pregnant woman living in her husband’s home who takes solace tending her bee hives and visiting The Dance Tree, her intricate relationships with Ida a close friend, Agnethe her sister in law – recently returned to her family after exile and the musicians hired to accompany the obsessed dancers.
It is a detailed story, I loved the fiction mixed in with the facts, opening up this historical event to us and giving voice to some great characters. It has a lot to like- hysteria, forbidden love, intricate relationships, superstition and vengeance. It is the sort of book I would have loved to read in hardback, savouring the experience, enjoying the beautiful cover and taking my time. This would make a perfect gift for fans of well researched historical fiction and I am jealous of those who are yet to read this for the first time.
Thank you to Net Galley, Pan Macmillan and the author for giving me the opportunity to read and review this advance copy.

Alsace, 1492. This happened: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensisheim_meteorite

Strasbourg, 1518. This happened: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_plague_of_1518

These two historical events underpin Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s book, especially the dancing plague in Strasbourg. The meteorite is relevant because our protagonist, Lisbet, was born as it crashed into a field and the mark it left on that field left its own mark on her family.

1518 was in the middle of a difficult period in Strasbourg. The sixteenth century was a period of extreme weather which meant years of failed harvests, searingly hot summers and winters so cold that people literally froze to death in the streets. Nowadays, we would turn to science to explain this, but, in 1518 there was only one explanation: God. Many preachers had taught that the comet was a warning. And the combination of extreme weather and territorial wars between France and Germany meant the poor people in the area had little choice but to borrow from the church. Unfortunately for them, at this point in history, the church was not so much a religious compassionate organisation but more a merciless money-making business.

In the midst of this, a woman called Frau Troffea in the city pauses as she walks and begins to dance. Over the next few days, she is joined by hundreds of other women as a “dancing mania” spreads across the city. This much is fact.

By 1518, Lisbet is married and living on her husband’s family’s farm where she tends the bees. And is heavily pregnant. As the story opens, she and the rest of the family are waiting for the return of Agnethe, Lisbet’s sister-in-law, who has been away for 7 years as a penance for an unnamed sin that the family will not talk about. In the book, it is very quickly obvious what that “sin” or “crime” is and it was a source of some frustration for me as I read that it was not revealed in the book until the halfway point. This was probably a very deliberate choice by the author but I found it put me on edge as I read because the reveal took so long to come.

Agnethe’s return coincides with the church making an unreasonable demand on the farm. And it is these two events that trigger and drive the story we read.

Kiran Millwood Hargrave is a poet as well as a novelist (and playwright). She is perhaps best known for her children’s books. Her book The Mercies, which I have not read, seems to take a similar line to this new book: both are based on historical events and tell the stories of strong women battling against the patriarchal and superstitious culture of medieval Europe. This book is interspersed with short chapters that describe several different women as they join the dancing, and we are left to imagine for ourselves what it is that drives them to that (the author gives her theory in her note at the end).

The writing here is elegant and the author’s poetic sensibilities are obvious in her prose. It’s an evocative book to read with both emotions and events described in elegant language. Some of the characters are perhaps a bit hemmed in by their purpose in the story, but that is a minor quibble that is probably more related to the fact that I rarely read historical fiction and read this in an attempt to broaden my reading horizons.

3.5 stars rounded up.

Really stunning, and a unique take on a fascinating historical moment that I am always very intrigued by.