![]() ![]() Harriet claims to be going to stay with a school chum, and joins the Dubrov Ballet Company. Harriet, like any Ibbotson heroine, could never deny the requests of a little child. ![]() By chance, however, she befriends a little boy, Henry, who is obsessed with the Amazon, and desperately wants Harriet to go there and help find his uncle, rumored to be there. He is intrigued by Harriet, and invites her, but Harriet knows she will not be allowed to go. ![]() One day one of Madame’s old friends arrives, a Monsieur Dubrov, looking for outstanding pupils to join his corps de ballet soon traveling to Manaus to perform. Her only joy is taking ballet at the Sonia Lavarre Academy of Dance. It is 1912 and Harriet Morton, 18, whose mother died when she was two, lives in Cambridge, England with her much older, narrow-minded, and unloving father, as well as his sister, her Aunt Louisa, who resents Harriet and treats her poorly. Manaus, Brazil and its famed opera house will be familiar to readers of The State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, but Ibbotson’s Amazon is a paradise rather than a dark and threatening milieu as in Patchett. This book follows the usual Ibbotson formula for Cinderella-style romances but this time much of it takes place in Manaus on the Amazon, rather than in Britain or Vienna. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |