The Dancers Dancing

by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne

The girls are spending a month in a Donegal Gaeltacht, learning Irish language and culture from their teachers and from the local people they are boarding with. They respond to the untamed landscape... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0856408069
• ISBN13: 9780856408069
• Release Date: December 2007
• Publisher: Blackstaff Press
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.2" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Lyrical and light

When I bought this book in Ireland last year, it was on the bestseller shelves in the bookstores, so Eilis seems popular in her home country. I wanted vacation reading that was literary and reflected the culture of the people in whose country I was a visitor. The book is pretty short, but I feel that is appropriate for the subject matter; it is essentially a string of childhood reminisces loosely gathered into a simple plot, which centers on a group of young pre-teen and teenage Irish and Northern Irish schoolgirls who leave their cities to attend a Gaelic-language school/camp in County Donegal (northwest, Irish-speaking, traditional region). The short, sweet, lyrical tale is light without being fluffy, and touches on issues of sexual discovery, class and political stratification, and parent-child relationships. The author beautifully evokes traditional rural Ireland in the 1960's as it is seen through the eyes of saucy urban schoolgirls on the brink of self-discovery.