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Summary and Reviews of The Ballroom by Anna Hope

The Ballroom by Anna Hope

The Ballroom

A Novel

by Anna Hope
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (8):
  • First Published:
  • Sep 6, 2016, 336 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

A searing novel of forbidden love on the Yorkshire moors from the author of the critically acclaimed debut Wake

England, 1911. At Sharston Asylum, men and women are separated by thick walls and barred windows. But on Friday nights, they are allowed to mingle in the asylum's magnificent ballroom. From its balconies and vaulted ceilings to its stained glass, the ballroom is a sanctuary. Onstage, the orchestra plays Strauss and Debussy while the patients twirl across the gleaming dance floor.

Amid this heady ambience, John Mulligan and Ella Fay first meet. John is a sure-footed dancer with a clouded, secretive face; Ella is as skittish as a colt, with her knobby knees and flushed cheeks. Despite their grim circumstances, the unlikely pair strikes up a tenuous courtship. During the week, he writes letters smuggled to her in secret, unaware that Ella cannot read. She enlists a friend to read them aloud and gains resolve from the force of John's words, each sentence a stirring incantation. And, of course, there's always the promise of the ballroom.
 
Then one of them receives an unexpected opportunity to leave Sharston for good. As Anna Hope's powerful, bittersweet novel unfolds, John and Ella face an agonizing dilemma: whether to cling to familiar comforts or to confront a new world—living apart, yet forever changed

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Reviews

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A haunting, highly readable novel of extremes, The Ballroom explores love and loss; progress and terror; and nature versus the institution, all of which will appeal to those who enjoy books with a slow tension-fueled build-up and an emotionally satisfying ending...continued

Full Review (676 words)

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(Reviewed by Claire McAlpine).

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Beyond the Book



Perfecting Humanity - The British Eugenics Movement

Eugenics CartoonAs mentioned in Anna Hope's historical novel The Ballroom, just over 100 years ago in 1912, London hosted the first International Eugenics Conference, an event attended by people who believed in the prevention of those deemed inferior – whom they labeled 'feeble-minded' – from reproducing. It was a categorization that referred more to their social class and wealth than intellectual ability. From The Spectator, 25 May 1912:

The only way of cutting off the constant stream of idiots and imbeciles and feeble-minded persons who help to fill our prisons and workhouses, reformatories, and asylums is to prevent those who are known to be mentally defective from producing offspring. Undoubtedly the best way of doing this...

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Read-Alikes

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If you liked The Ballroom, try these:

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  • Blue Asylum jacket

    Blue Asylum

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    Published 2013

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    In the midst of the American Civil War, a southern plantation owner's wife is arrested by her husband and declared insane for interfering with his slaves. She is sent to an island mental asylum to come to terms with her wrongdoing, but instead finds love and escape with a war-haunted Confederate soldier.

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BookBrowse Book Club

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