Dancers Dancing

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.