It’s a real pleasure today to be joining the blog tour for The Paris Dancer by Nicola Rayner, and sharing my review: published on 13th February by Aria Fiction, it’s now available for kindle, in paperback, and as an audiobook. My thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for the invitation and support, and to the publishers for my advance reading copy (provided via netgalley).
Nicola is a new-to-me author – her previous two books, The Girl Before You in 2019 and You And Me in 2020, were psychological suspense and compared with the work of Lisa Jewell or Gillian McAllister, and weren’t really my usual choice of reading (although the reviews were really excellent). But as soon as Rachel’s email landed in my inbox, I could see that her latest was far more up my street – dual time with an intriguing wartime thread, the Parisian setting, the focus on dance – and it was a book I was particularly looking forward to.
A heart-wrenching and unforgettable story of courage, friendship and resistance, inspired by the incredible true story of a Jewish ballroom dancer in Paris during WWII, perfect for fans of The Paris Library.
Paris, 1938. Annie Mayer arrives in France with dreams of becoming a ballerina. But when the war reaches Paris, she’s forced to keep her Jewish heritage a secret. Then a fellow dancer offers her a lifeline: a ballroom partnership that gives her a new identity. Together, Annie and her partner captivate audiences across occupied Europe, using her newfound fame and alias to aid the Resistance.
New York, 2012. Miriam, haunted by her past, travels from London to New York to settle her great-aunt Esther’s estate. Among Esther’s belongings, she discovers notebooks detailing a secret family history and the story of a brave dancer who risked everything to help Jewish families during the war.
As Miriam uncovers Esther’s life in Europe, she realises the story has been left for her to finish. Grappling with loss and the possibility of new love, Miriam must find the strength to reconcile her past and embrace her future.
Beautiful storytelling, with two timelines – set in wartime Paris, and in New York in 2012 – perfectly balanced, the stories nicely intertwined, and the narrative compelling.
After a significant loss in her own life that has had a major impact on her confidence, Miriam travels to New York following the death of her Great Aunt Esther – on the plane, she makes a friend through a chance meeting with Lucky, a dancer, and as their lives become increasingly entangled she becomes increasingly able to draw on her reserves of strength and bravery, begin to blossom, and slowly rebuild her life. But she also finds Esther’s diaries – a set of notebooks with a detailed account of her life in Paris spanning the wartime years, capturing the challenges of life as a Jew under Nazi occupation but also her own friendship with Annie Mayer, a talented dancer, whose aspirations to be a ballerina had to be set aside for a ballroom dancing partnership that saw her increasingly involved with the work of the Resistance. And the account also raises a mystery – a significant presence in Esther’s story who’s been inexplicably erased from family history, and Miriam grows increasingly determined to understand the sequence of events and restore her memory.
Both stories are equally strong, and the device of exploring the notebooks works exceptionally well – and the threads have common themes around hidden secrets, guilt, resilience and recovery. There are particularly emotional moments very well handled – both the stories’ heroines are particularly sympathetic and well developed, and very real – and more than a touch of very engaging romance. I very much enjoyed the well researched settings, brought to life so vividly – Esther’s time with her family working at the Paris music hall, Miriam’s visits to various dance events as Lucky attempts to find the dance that speaks to her and fills her heart with joy. And the supporting cast adds a lot to the story – especially Esther’s endearing elderly neighbour Bibi, with more secrets gradually emerging than Esther was ever able to share.
At times, the story is intensely moving – but despite its moments of sadness, it’s also extremely uplifting and inspiring, with the most perfect ending. This was a book I thoroughly enjoyed – and one I’d very much recommend to others.
About the author
Born in South Wales, Nicola Rayner is a novelist and dance writer based in London. She is the author of The Girl Before You, which was picked by the Observer as a debut to look out for in 2019, optioned for television and translated into multiple languages. Her second novel, You and Me, was published by Avon, HarperCollins, in 2020. In her day job as a journalist, Nicola has written about dance for almost two decades, cutting her teeth on the tango section of Time Out Buenos Aires. She edited the magazine Dance Today from 2010 to 2015 and worked as assistant editor of Dancing Times, the UK’s leading dance publication, from 2019 until 2022. She continues to dance everything from ballroom to breakdance, with varying degrees of finesse.
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