pippa passes

by Rumer Godden

Book Overview

A young English ballet dancer, Pippa Fane, journeys to Venice with a touring company and discovers love, evil, and the vast complexities of the adult world. By the author of An Episode of Sparrows. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0333608178
• ISBN13: 9780333608173
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co.
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.8" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Wouldn't It Be Lovely?

A curiously charming romance that is almost all wish-fulfillment fantasy. No one could be so lucky, so beautiful, so talented as Pippa Fane-- but we forget the unreality in the pleasure of romance, as Pippa falls for a gondalier, is befriended by a Marchesa, gets naively into difficulties with her lesbian ballet mistress, meets an archbishop and finds favor with Venetian audiences dancing at La Fenice. And no matter how crowded or hot we may have found Venice in the summer, everyone knows it is somehow a magical place. If this novel took itself seriously, it would be a disaster; but it recognizes that it is playing with romantic stereotypes in a world so fragile the lightest breath would blow it away. Sometimes, as in the portrayal of the ballet mistress, we seem to have stepped back into a 1940s movie; indeed, the novel reminds me of nothing so much as the old series of Noel Streatfield's children's books, especially "Ballet Shoes." Rumer Godden trained in ballet and ran a multi-racial ballet school in India for eight years. That she could have produced this little bit of gossamer when she was nearly ninety is remarkable.