Well, here we are. Our regional Performing Arts Festival is all set to go; in less than 24 hours I’ll be back once again in the velvet blackness of the dark theatre, losing myself – for brief moments, in between my official duties as one of the organizers – in the magical world of music and dance. This is one of the high points of my year, and one of the glorious circumstances of parenting a dancer.
Said dancer is keyed up but calm; her solos are as ready as they’re going to be, costumes are coming together but for a few titchy little details we’ll figure out today – sewing gaps together and fixing safety pins in strategic places and double-, triple- and quadruple-checking all the gear we’ll be toting along for the next four days. (Gotta love the farm girl all dolled up with her stage makeup on and her long, gorgeous false eyelashes! – so different from the reality of the other part of her life…)
It’s been stupid-busy this week, and I’ve been dipping into the D.E. Stevenson stash. I started with Kate Hardy, which was enjoyable but not fabulous, pretty standard stuff. Then I chose Anna and Her Daughters – and wow! – so good! – I loved it! I swear there was a tear in my eye at the perfectly lovely ending. <sniffle>
Taking a deep breath, the next grab from the lucky dip brought out Spring Magic. This one started off a bit ho-hum-ish, but I’m now mid-way through, it’s picked up steam, the complications are thrillingly complicated, and I’m completely at a loss as to how it will end. Perfect.
I was mildly interested in D.E. Stevenson before; I do believe I am now becoming something of a fan. Some of these are really very lovely.
I am hoping to get a review or two done up, but no promises. After the dance component of our festival is completed, we have a few days to catch our breath and then another big one – seven days worth – in the big city to the north, so I’ll be living in the theatre and on the road for some time to come. I’ll be back in the daylight the last week of March, frantically transplanting in the nursery and playing catch up as the plant sale season approaches like a freight train …
No big, deep, heavy books for me this month; it’ll be escape lit all the way!
Leaves & Pages 
Wonderful books I do agree! I’m re-reading The Blue Sapphire right now and loving it.
DES is perfect for this kind of mood. She wrote some real clunkers but most of her books seem to have a certain charm about them and they always, always help me pass a few happy hours in otherwise busy and stressful days. The only thing I can’t get over is how awful she was at concluding her stories. She goes on very nicely until she suddenly seems to realise an ending is necessary and they all manage to feel wrong somehow. Very strange.
Claire, I do agree with the awful endings! Spring Magic was going along just fine, but took a downward plunge in the last few chapters. So disappointing! It’s like DES has no clue with what to do, so she just DROPS everything. Marries off the heroine and sends everyone else away with no real wrap up. Argh!
But it’s great escapism for a good three-quarters of the book. 😉
Good luck to your daughter! (Or break a leg, I should say.) I’m sure she will do brilliantly.
Thank you so much! I’ve passed this along, and she says “Thank You”, too. She’s looking great, and is much calmer than me at this point. I get *so* nervous for her; she works so hard for those few minutes on stage! At some point “festivalling” I just let everything go and relax, but I’m not quite at that stage yet – once we’re on the road and have done the run-through of “do we have everything?” I’ll be much happier! Actually, once we pull into the theatre parking lot is safer; one year we broke down on the way to a big performance (Christmas Eve – she was dancing in Nutcracker) and luckily we were just pulling into town & someone recognized our vehicle & stopped so I sent her along alone while I waited for the tow truck. Oh gosh, why did I think of that just now?! ;-0
Quick synopsis (& motherly boast) – she did indeed do brilliantly. 3 golds on her solos, including two that she choreographed herself (!!!), and her troupe group dances did exceedingly well, several winning high marks trophies in their various categories against all of the other groups in the Festival. She had a lot of fun with the other dancers in her troupe inbetween sessions – it was a very “goofy” dressing room this year – one of her instructors brought along her 1-year-old so there was a studio “mascot” 🙂 , and much of the first few days were spent creating props for a dance which they’d just completed last minute. Cardboard & paint & scissors & staplers – they “crafted” in between dancing. And she received a Provincials Festival runner-up spot in Senior Modern Dance, which was a huge honour. This means she will take over the Competitor spot if for some reason the Modern Competitor (an absolutely brilliant dancer from Prince George) can’t go; and she has a free pass to all performances and workshops at the big Provincial Festival in May. And she performs her best solo in a concert at the Festival. Very cool!
And now, back to the books! (I haven’t really read for days…)
That’s an interesting thought about DES’s endings. I mean, I know some of them just stop. And in some cases I like that, because she doesn’t feel the need to spell out the future for the readers; she’s essentially saying, this is life. I’m taking the story of these people’s lives just so far, and then send them on their way, and they will succeed or fail, as real people do. She’s leaving us to speculate what happens next.
For example, The English Air takes place in 1940, and was written then. She gets our protagonists to a place of relative safety, for the moment, and they have an understanding with each other. But the future was a dark and frightening place at that point in history, and there is no chance of taking it farther, except to leave the Anglo-German hero wondering if there is any chance for happiness in Germany in the future.
Good topic for discussion at the DES group.
I’ve read only a handful of DES and liked some more than others. I agree with you that she’s great for lighter reading. Thanks for recommending Anna and Her Daughters.
As to the ending of Spring Magic, (published in 1942, written in 1941) this is another book written during the early days of WWII, when there was a real chance of England being invaded. The future was not clear. Writing a book that faced the war, and yet left the characters and reader feeling hopeful was not an easy thing under that situation.
I am not sure how else the book could end as written at that time. A simular book written today would probably have a different ending. But this isn’t a modern book. It is over 70 years old, and has the view point of a different time.
I did a study comparing books written in England during the first early years of the war that addressed the war (a suprising number of books written then and there ignored the war). They are all somewhat different in tone to books about that time period written afterwords, even those written by people who were alive during the war. And MUCH different than books written by people who weren’t living adults at the time, but only know of it through research.
I think Stevenson did a very good job of her assigned task: Show some of the dangers of war, inlist sympothy from readers in places not yet commited to the war effort, like the US, and help readers in the UK keep their spirits high.