Description
'I could not put this book down and loved every page.' - Salena Godden
'Humane, funny, surprising, profound.' - Chris Power
'A masterpiece.' - David Keenan
Meet Drew Lord Haig, called upon to sing the obscure hit from his youth at a paramilitary event. Or Max, who recalls an eventful journey to a Christian film festival. Meet Mrs Dallesandro, in the tanning salon on her wedding anniversary dreaming of a teenage sexual experience. And Sonya, who scours the streets of Belfast for the missing posters of her dead son.
In Dance Move, the collection of stories from Wendy Erskine, we meet characters who are looking to wrest control of their lives, only to find themselves defined by the moment in their past that marked them.
In these stories - as in real life - the funny, the tender and the devastating go hand in hand. Full of warmth, the familiar and the strange, they are about what it means to live in the world, how far you can end up from where you came from, and what it means to look back.
Shortlisted for the irish Book Awards Short Story of the Year.
Shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize.
From critically acclaimed Northern Irish writer Wendy Erskine: a collection of profound and darkly funny stories about people trying to move on with their lives, while bound to the past.
About the Author
Wendy Erskine lives in Belfast. Sweet Home, her first collection of stories, was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize. It was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and won the 2020 Butler Literary Award.
Reviews
Erskine is less interested in dispensing wisdom than in evoking the ambient pathos of ordinary lives. The understated yet distinctive sensibility first showcased in her 2018 debut collection, Sweet Home, is well honed in this impressive follow-up. * FT *
Wendy Erskine is the greatest short story writer of her generation. Dance Move is a masterpiece. -- David Keenan
No one writes the bare-knuckle crossroads of sex and class like Wendy Erskine!
-- Joanna WalshThe stories are never sentimental, nor do they strain credulity. What grounds them is Erskine's distinctive style: she is a great noticer, with an eye for microscopic detail, and pays close attention to the syntax and cadences of ordinary conversation. . . She is also extremely funny. * Spectator *
A spectacular feat in the short story form . . . Erskine's Dance Move has such a beautiful deftness of touch that in writing the intricacies and intimacies between people in their most vulnerable moments, there is a tenderness felt by the reader which surpasses words.' * Caught By The River *
The people that inhabit Wendy Erskine's stories are not merely 'characters', but instead are living, breathing entities whose lives, you feel, continue beyond the page. Few writers achieve this depth of human understanding so succinctly, and to read Dance Move is to step into their shadowed worlds. It also cements her status as simply one of the very best short story writers around. -- Benjamin Myers
Comic brilliance -- Sinead Gleeson * Guardian *
Dance Move is a triumph, each story so perfectly formed, each character vividly set and startling. I could not put this book down and loved every page. Wendy Erskine is a profound and ingenious story teller, a magnificent writer of the highest calibre. -- Salena Godden
Erskine's stories open slight, but they contain more than it seems possible for short stories to contain. Their warmth and depth - even in their depictions of lives that are cold, or shallow, or hopelessly adrift - is testament not only to Erskine's unparalleled skill as a writer of short stories, but also to her humanity. Her characters are astonishingly alive. They rise off the pages of Dance Move and they lodge in the heart, and stay there. -- Keith Ridgway
There are few short story writers I look forward to reading as much as Wendy Erskine. Humane, funny, surprising, profound; in Dance Move she does it all. -- Chris Power
Daring, funny, heartbreaking . . . not to be missed * Observer *
So funny and so moving. Erskine's writing is like gentle razor blades, carving blissfully through to the real. -- Ruby Cowling
Dance Move is the most consummate book of short stories I know. -- Tom Conaghan * Irish Times *
No one is writing better stories than Wendy Erskine. -- John Mitchinson
I wondered if Dance Move . . . could possibly surpass Erskine's debut Sweet Home. It does. -- Matt Rowland Hill, author of Original Sins: A Memoir
Wendy Erskine is like Vermeer, I think. In the same way that supposedly ordinary people and places are illuminated by Vermeer in a way that is technically flawless, but also imbued with something extra that can't be extracted from the whole. I do think it is genius really, in the both of them. -- Ben Pester, author of Am I In The Right Place?
Wendy Erskine's debut, Sweet Home, was pitch perfect . . . Dance Move is equally brilliant; set in Belfast and brimful of well drawn, compelling characters, these spare, spacious stories pack an emotional punch * Daily Mail *
Erskine's pitch is close to perfect, and as a chronicler of the human condition, she has the most penetrating gaze. * iNews *
If there's a sharper, brighter, truer, funnier, more compelling, more intensely and rewardingly attentive storyteller around I'd like to know who. -- David Hayden
Exhilarating . . . a vivacious sweep of characters . . . the turn of events ingenious . . . * Irish Times *
A remarkable revelation of the everyday extraordinary. Erskine has shown us how the banal can also be epic in its compassion and understated raw beauty. This is a book that carries with it a quiet joy, a reminder of the intensity of life, even at its most quotidian. * Totally Dublin *
Superb * Hot Press *
Storytelling that is both compelling and original . . . Dance Move is the work of a writer of immense skill * Sunday Independent *
A spectacular feat in the short story form . . . Dance Move has such a beautiful deftness of touch that . . . there is a tenderness felt by the reader which surpasses words. * Caught by the River *
I bow down to Wendy Erskine's continued mastery of the short story -- Mia Levitin, author of The Future of Seduction
Wendy Erskine's collection of stories Dance Move has contents as intriguing as the title: funny, eccentric, perfectly-pitched stories about relationships and the funny things people do to each other, which I would love even if they weren't mostly set in my neck of the woods. -- John Self, The Irish Times
Book Information
ISBN 9781529079678
Author Wendy Erskine
Format Hardback
Page Count 240
Imprint Picador
Publisher Pan Macmillan
Weight(grams) 356g
Dimensions(mm) 223mm * 144mm * 29mm
