The Dance Sequence

A word about the NOVELS. There are six books in this section. I

think of them as 'The Dance Sequence'. A dance because it was while

I was writing DANCE ON MY GRAVE that I realised there would be six

novels. And because I think of them as an intricate kind of dance - a

dance of stories and of characters, a dance of incidents and ideas

and experiences, and fundamental to everything else, a dance of

words, of language. A sequence because they are like members of a

family. Each one is an individual and has its own separate personality,

standing on its own feet, so to speak; but each is genetically related

to the others. They share much in common while also seeing the

world through their own eyes.

Together they paint a portrait of a certain kind of youthful life, of

becoming adult in the last years of the twentieth century and the

first of the new millennium. Each is especially concerned with

particular kinds of experience. BREAKTIME, for example, seems to me

to be very preoccupied with physical experience - the life of the five

senses. DANCE ON MY GRAVE is to do especially with emotions and

personal obsessions. NOW I KNOW dwells on the dramatic clash of

belief and rational thought. THE TOLL BRIDGE is a 'recognition story'

that speaks of discovering the friendship of platonic love which young

people often call soul mates. The characters in POSTCARDS FROM NO

MAN'S LAND are constantly crossing boundaries. - Just one way of

thinking about the stories, there are others, but this will do for a

start.

The family was completed in 2005 with publication of the sixth book,

THIS IS ALL: THE PILLOW BOOK OF CORDELIA KENN. It is called This

Is All not only because it is the final book in the Sequence, but also

because it sums up, adds to, and revises all that has been described

in the previous five novels. No wonder it is 816 pages long! It is also

the only book in the Sequence which has a girl as the main character.

As epigraphs in the books put it: All writing is drawing. All writing is

memory. All writing is a gift.

For a critical study of all six novels in the Dance Sequence see: Betty

Greenway, Aidan Chambers: Master Literary Choreographer, The

Scarecrow Press, 2006, 133pp, ISBN 978-0-8108-5087-3.

See READERS WRITE for an essay by Kate Smith on 'Meeting and Rescue' in the novels in the Dance Sequence.

During the summer of the compulsive attraction between Hal Robinson and Barry Gorman, Hal's curiosity with death leads the boys to enter a pact. Whoever dies first, the other must dance on his grave. Aidan Chambers masterfully traces the relationship from friendship to overwhelming obsession in a commanding, ruthless, roller-coaster ride of narration.