Dancing in a Distant Place

This is a very sympathetic exploration of how a conscientious wife and mother can be blind to the lives of her closest loved ones. Iris is a widowed mother of two teenage children who posthumously discovers her husband gambled away all their assets while she thought he was going to the office every day. Needing to make a living to support herself and her children, she finds a job as schoolmistress (the Missy, as the villagers refer to her) in a hamlet in a remote corner of Scotland. She finds the small-mindedness of the villagers stifling but falls in love with her pupils and fairly takes the hamlet by storm with classroom innovations. Meanwhile, her teenage children flounder in their new surroundings, the elder son influenced by the social revolution of the 60s counter-culture and the younger daughter committing pranks just to fit in with her peers. There is a lot of sadness in their situation that each character tries to push aside while getting on with life in this new setting. All of the characters are sympathetic and likeable, even though they don't always do likeable things. The locale is rendered well along with the contrast with life in urban Scotland. One has to live in this village for 50 years and then die there in order to be considered a member of the community! It turns out her pupils adore her even while their parents view her suspiciously. An easy book to get wrapped up in.

This is a wonderful story. I literally did not want to stop reading it and wished it would go on forever. I guarantee that you will go back and read the first chapter when you are through.

If you're expecting the Highland fling, bagpipes, kilts, and stingy Scotchmen, you're in for a surprise. DANCING IN A DISTANT PLACE could have been set almost anyplace. Isla Dewar's novel is more about the communality of small towns and a teacher's impact on her students. The novel starts and ends with a theater outing and Iris Chisholm at age seventy-four. But we are soon taken back to 1968 when Iris was thirty-nine and moving to the small Scottish village of Green Cairns. Her husband has died, leaving her penniless, and she is forced to take a teaching job that includes a house. She has two teenage children, Sophie and Scott. The novel's charm revolves around the characters. Sophie and Scott are thoroughly likable, although confused, teens. You will definitely recognize them if you have teenagers of your own. Iris must also decide between two love interests, an eccentric lawyer who drives with his eyes shut, and a handyman who is also a swimming instructor and philosopher. The character who will win your heart, however, is Colin, one of Iris's students. He lives with his grandmother who calls him "a soul," as in "poor soul." Colin can't tie his own shoes, and doesn't speak, although he can. He wants to marry Iris. She tells him she won't have a man who can't tie his shoelaces. The villages call Iris "The Missy," and she has almost as much influence as the parish priest. Dewar also has a unique writing style. Just about every character is given a point of view at least once in the story. Yet the novel flows like a kitchen faucet. There are several subplots, including Scott's love affair with an older woman, and Sophie's fear of being expelled from school for writing an obscenity about one of her teachers on a wall, but the main focus is on Iris and her twenty students. She teaches them to dance; she teaches them to swim; and she teaches them to deal with death, when one of them is run over by a car on a narrow country lane. While reading a good novel, you tend to slow down when you begin to run out of pages, not wanting it to end. With this one, I actually went back and reread the first chapter, and I never do that.

The Glasgow police inform social studies teacher Iris Chisholm that her husband Harry died in a car accident on an icy road in a part of town that he should not have been at. She and her two teens Scot and Sophie mourn their loss. His place of business informs Iris that Harry was redundant over two years ago and received severance pay plus his pension investment. Iris also learns that he was behind on mortgage payments and took out a remortgage and cashed in their life insurance. On top of that he has gambling debts to his turf accountant. Headmistress at her school Miss Moffat arranges for Iris to move to a rural school as the "Missie". She and her children relocate to Green Cairns in the Highlands. There she becomes embroiled with her students as the only teacher in town while ignoring her own and her family troubles. While her son and daughter struggle to adjust, Iris shocks the locals when as the expected virgin pure "Missie" has two local males desiring her. DANCING IN A DISTANT PLACE is a fabulous family drama starring a woman who struggles to remake her life, but soon finds new personal crisis to cope with. Iris is the center of this fine drama as she starts over and is there for her students, but is not as available to help her stressed teen children because their problems remind her of what she ran away from. Fans of contemporary fiction will want to read Isla Dewar's deep tale of an individual throwing her soul into the public good while ignoring the personal calamity that eats at the soul of her and her children. Harriet Klausner