Dancing Backwards cover art

Dancing Backwards

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Dancing Backwards

By: Salley Vickers
Narrated by: Jilly Bond
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

The brilliant new work from the bestselling author of ‘Miss Garnet’s Angel’ and ‘The Other Side of You’.

Violet Hetherington has taken the rash step of joining a transatlantic cruise ship to New York to visit Edwin, an old friend. As she makes the six day crossing, she relives the traumatic events that led to her losing Edwin's friendship, and abandoning her career as a poet, for the safety of marriage and domesticity.

Despite her natural reserve, she meets a rich variety of passengers travelling with her, who affect her understanding of her own past. Most significantly, she meets Dino, the dance host, whose motives in befriending Vi are shady, but who teaches her to ballroom dance – and inadvertently helps her to recover from her past.

Moving between the late sixties and the present day, Dancing Backwards is written with the lightness of touch and psychological insight which characterise Salley Vickers' acclaimed work. This bittersweet novel is subtle, poignant and wonderfully entertaining.

©2009 HarperCollins Publishers (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers Absurdist Coming of Age Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Tear-jerking

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Father cover art
Tell the Girl cover art
Killing Helen cover art
Mums on the Run cover art
The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym cover art
An Equal Stillness cover art
What Was Rescued cover art
Invisible Women cover art
Voyage of Innocence cover art
The Wildflower Path cover art
Villa on the Riviera cover art
Five French Hens cover art
The Lemon Table cover art
Mr Gandy's Grand Tour cover art
One Summer in Venice cover art
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
Not read anything quite like it before. It’s an easy read, very light and quite enjoyable.

Easy read, enjoyable

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Salley Vickers is a good and subtle writer and this is a lovely novel with lots of depth as such I cannot think why the narrator has presented it as a cheesy comic turn. It's very difficult to like any of the characters as presented and the flippant twang of poet Violet's intonation is the least credible and most irritating of all. I only finished by determinedly filtering out the performance and focusing on the words, it's difficult though as the character 'voice' and narrator 'voice' slip around. I found myself wondering whether the audio editor at Harper Audio listened to this before releasing it. I really hope an alternative reading may be released at some point that will do this lovely novel justice. I regret not buying book instead.

A good book spoiled by obtrusive narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.