Book 3 – “The Dancing Floor” by John Buchan

The Dancing Floor by John Buchan is the third of my 20 Books of Summer to be completed. The author is a thriller writer best known for The Thirty-Nine Steps which is itself best known for the films based on the story. I have read a few of this author’s thrillers over the past few years and you can read my review of The Island of Sheep here and of The Three Hostages here. Those books share a hero, Richard Hannay, but The Dancing Floor is a stand-alone novel. The book was written in 1920.

The story is actually told to the reader by an unnamed narrator who hears it from the main character Sit Edward Leithem. Other parts of this story are also told to Sir Edward and then on to us by other characters. This method of relaying a story is one which I have noticed many older books use (I especially noted it in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson) and it does seem to distance the reader from the action, although I think that it was well done here in that it allows Sir Edward to be the main voice but gives him a reason to tell the story.

The first part of the story concerns a developing friendship between Sir Edward and Vernon Milburne who is a friend of his nephew from university and is a Greek and classical scholar. As their friendship develops Vernon tells Sir Edward about a dream which he has each year which involves him opening one of a series of doors. There are twelve doors in total and as he approaches the final door he is convinced that something important will happen to him after the final dream and so he, therefore, lives his life in anticipation of that future revelation.

The story also introduces the reader to Kore Arabin, a young woman making her mark in the balls and country house events of the wealthy. Kore is the daughter of a man who lived an evil and dissolute lifestyle on a Greek island but she is innocent and eager to atone for the crimes of the past. She has left evidence of possible problems on her Greek island with her lawyer which she asks him to pass on to Sir Edward who has become a close friend. Sit Edward reads the evidence, shares some of it with Vernon, discovers that Kore may be in danger from the local people living on her island and then pursues her to Greece to try and save her.

There’s a lot of build up to the action in this story which only really happens in the last third of the book. Sir Edward is a typical Buchan hero. He is English, a war hero, fit, an outdoor enthusiast and a man who feels that his role is to protect women. He is a lawyer with good connections and very strong feelings about what is correct behaviour for young people, especially women, and what is not. He is forty years of age in this book and the two other main characters are in their mid-twenties.

This book is partly about the tension between pagan beliefs and Christianity. The people of Kore’s island have suffered from famine and the results of the evil perpetrated by her father. They believe that they have to conduct an ages old ceremony which involves the sacrifice of Kore and one other person to put things right. Sir Edward frequently refers to them as “savages” and their beliefs as “primitive”. Vernon’s dreams also introduce a little of the supernatural to the story although I don’t think that this strand of the plot was resolved satisfactorily for me.

This book is well written and surprisingly engaging given that little happens for most of it but it has problems for the modern reader. The author believes that each nationality (or race ?) has characteristics which show themselves in every person. He frequently tells you that things are “foreign” which is not always a compliment. He thinks that people who are not Christian are “savages”. He talks about young women wearing make-up and enjoying themselves loudly as vulgar and he only befriends Kore when he discovers that underneath her lively façade she is really “innocent”. All the way through the story we are aware that none of the English men in Kore’s life will do as she wants or let her make her own decisions because they feel that it is their duty to protect her. The book is sexist, classist and racist (even though my copy had an introduction which claims that it isn’t – I disagree). It is a novel of his time and a reflection of the class, background and life of the writer and presumably those for whom the book was written.

I decided a while ago that I was going to stop reading novels by this author, and others who are similar, because of the views that are expressed in the books. I read this title because the book had been given to me. Although I enjoyed the plot and characterisation I was frequently stopped short in my reading by an inference, assumption or phrase which reflected values which are not mine. There are plenty of thrillers and adventure stories published which don’t have the same effect so I shall concentrate on reading those in the future.