Lady Dance

ackie French (author)

Angus&Robertson, Australia: 2000; 120pp

ISBN: 0207197474

Note: extension concepts

Genres: historical fiction

Issues: faith, friendship, perspectives

‘Have you ever known what it's like to wait to die? To sit with the smell of death and wait for it to come to you?'

Set in the time of the Black Plague, when whole villages are left empty because the people have either died or fled the pestilence, Lady Dance tells the story of a mysterious woman who gathers a small group of survivors around her and encourages them to dance. ‘Dance! If you dance then death can't catch you.' Is she an angel sent to guide them? Who is this strange, fragile, beautiful lady who seems filled with joy and faith? Can they truly survive the plague simply by dancing? And when Lady Dance is taken from them, how will they survive?

Told from the perspective of a teenage girl who nursed her parents and siblings through to the messy end of their suffering, this narrative is not so much about the plague as about the human ability to survive even the darkest of times. Lady Dance encourages her followers to sing, dance and rejoice, to find joy in small things and thus survive. Her message - communicated through her actions rather than words - is to love life, to find strength in the beauty of the natural world and energy in the joy of movement. This is a novel about faith rather than religion, about the courage that comes from the heart rather than the mind.

Beautifully written and quite different to most children's literature, this is definitely a novel for sophisticated readers.