Dancing Backwards in High Heels (Christine Darcas, Little Brown, $32.99 pb, ISBN 9780733622908, April) ***

Maddie is a middle-aged woman frustrated with the mundane and messy tasks of motherhood and marriage crisis. Overwhelmed by the pressures of readjusting in Australia after moving from America, she seeks glamour and escape in the form of Latin American dancing. Now balancing being a wife and mother with her reawakened sexuality and womanhood, Maddie finds her young and handsome dance partner Hugh disrupting everything. Darcas talks early on about, a ‘touch so frequent that it’s meaningless,’ and this is what becomes of the dance-as-life metaphors in the story. While at first these are clever and relevant, they become overused and lose effect in their. Another weakness in the writing is the problematic tone. Most of the time the story is quite serious, but then in awkward places it changes to a casual, chick-lit style that seems forced. There are effective elements as well, including the autobiographical aspect. Maddie’s life is very similar to Darcus’, adding a realistic depth—such as the lively and original comments on Australian culture from an American perspective. Although some of the subject matter seems trivial, subtle alliterations and a good rhythm enrich the story and make it more readable. This novel is nothing remarkable, but will appeal to middle-aged women who enjoy easy-to-read commercial women’s fiction.

Lucy Meredith is a casual bookseller for Angus and Robertson and freelance writer

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker