The Ballroom Girls (Ballroom Girls, 1)
Set in Blackpool during the summer of 1942 we follow three friends – Sylvia, Pearl and Joy – as they learn, or in Sylvia’s case teach, dance… and the relationships that subsequently unfold with their dance partners. A subplot which explores the terrors of being a gay couple in this era is particularly evocative and frightening. Blackpool itself is almost another character in the story, and so descriptive is the writing that the reader is on the beach with the tired donkeys, strolling along its promenade, at the arcades, amidst the elephants from the circus who were kept beneath the tower presumably to protect them from the bombs. There are some small signs the war is on: a couple of inconvenient air raids; the GIs in the background who’re also to be found at dance classes; an Italian immigrant sent off to a camp; and the ever-present fear of being called up – but otherwise it doesn’t much impinge on the story.
Jenny Holmes has cornered the World War Two historical fiction market in writing about plucky friends living through the war but somehow remaining upbeat through all their trials and tribulations. The descriptions of dance, including the differences between Standard and Latin, are engaging, and this story should appeal to fans of Strictly Come Dancing as much as fans of historical fiction set in the Second World War.
