As a young teenager, I very much enjoyed the first four books in Lorna Hill's 'Sadler's Wells' series about young ballet dancers. I think I vaguely knew there were further books in the series, but they were not in print at the time.
In recent years, they evidently came into print again. I've managed to acquire a few more of her books, in paperback, from charity shops. Unfortunately, they've all been somewhat disappointing, not (in my opinion) living up to the promise of the first four.
I picked up 'Principal Role' recently, very inexpensively, and decided to read it for some light entertainment after a somewhat heavier novel. I like children's fiction, and usually find it good for relaxing.
This is the ninth in the Sadler's Wells series, and while it wasn't a bad read, it wasn't very inspiring. The somewhat unlikely story is about Fazia, Crown Princess of a small European country, who is currently in exile.
The book opens in Switzerland, where she longs for freedom but is cooped up with her bodyguard, and - after a while - a nice young English governess called Elizabeth. Fazia is extremely good at ballet, and is destined for the Royal Ballet School in London in September. However she is not passionate about ballet at all, just seeing it as one more thing she has to learn because her brother, the King, insists.
In somewhat unlikely circumstances, after a series of mild scares, Fazia and Elizabeth bump into a young man called Timothy. He is the likeable son of a Vicar who featured in one or two of the previous books, and who is in love with another ballet dancer.
Then the action moves to London, when Fazia moves there, and also to a small mining village in the North of England, where Timothy lives. The story brings in several characters from previous books, whom I vaguely remembered. However this would probably be rather confusing (not to mention pointless) for anyone who had not read the others.
The style is fairly rushed, and the characters are pretty flat. In the earlier books, Lorna Hill wrote in the first person, so we got far more of an insight into some of the individuals. But this book is written from several third person perspectives, and it really doesn't work all that well.
It's not a bad book - if one forgets how very unlikely the basic plot is - but I'm not sure who it would appeal to. The style is that of children's books, yet the main character is 15, and the issues - such as they are - would probably not be of much interest to young children. I suppose it's really only appropriate for people like me who remember the series fondly from childhood.
No longer in print anywhere, apparently, but sometimes available second-hand.
Review copyright Sue's Book Reviews, 29th November 2008
I had just finished the seventh in Lorna Hill's ballet series. I didn't much like it, but I thought would read the tenth, 'Swan Feather', which was also new to me. It was a little better, but there were still rather too many characters, some of whom would be bewildering to anyone who had not read previous books in the series.
This book is mainly about Sylvia Swan. She os a newly-introduced character, so it does stand pretty well as a complete story. There are some rather horrible incidents early in the book, which might disturb an over-sensitive young teenager. However they are soon in the past. More disturbing is the cruel and heartless Nigel who appears in previous books, and features again in this one.
The action is really much too rapid for my tastes. Do people really meet, fall in love and plan to get married in the space of about three weeks? However my main complaints are the multiple viewpoints and author comments that pepper this book. I feel that the story would would have worked much better if it had all been written from Sylvia's own perspective.
If you have read others in the series, this isn't a bad story to while away a couple of hours. But if not - or if you have no interest in ballet or teenage girls - there are far better children's books available.
This book is occasionally re-published, and fairly widely available second-hand.
'Return to the Wells' is seventh in Lorna Hill's series for teenagers about the ballet world. As a teenager myself, I read and re-read the first four in the series and loved them, but had no idea there were more. Apparently there are twelve or thirteen altogether, all out of print. So I was delighted when I discovered this one at a charity shop.
Alas, once I started reading, my delight evaporated.
Whereas the first four books were written in the first person, albeit by different characters, this one is written in the third person. It doesn't even focus on just one or two people; the viewpoint dots around all over. It even includes some cringeworthy author asides, almost reminiscent of Victorian novels, but (in my opinion) worse.
Nor is the story very interesting. It's supposed to be complete in itself, so I assumed that it wouldn't matter that I hadn't read the fifth or sixth in the series. But I found myself bewildered by multiple characters and subplots, some of which had nothing to do with the main story.
Even the main plot was rather convoluted, involving a ballet dancer called Ella. She apparently ran away from Sadler's Wells - I didn't gather why - and is now returning. It seems that she was an adopted child, from an exaggeratedly awful 'working class' background. Perhaps that was relevant in the earlier book that introduced Ella. But I could not see the point of the story popping back to 'Me Mam' every so often, to hear the unintelligent comments of the family whom Ella seems to have cast aside in a rather snooty manner.
Then there is a foray into Switzerland when Ella recovers from an illness. It adds nothing at all to the story, and seems to be padding.
Not recommended, unless you have read the first six and want to know what happens to all the characters. I have one more in this series, but begin to think I should just have re-read the first four, which I still remember fondly.
