Under a Dancing Star by Laura Wood
Book of the Week: 18 August 2024
Under a Dancing Star by Laura Wood. Scholastic, 2019. Cover illustration by Yehrin Tong
To the despair of her parents, Beatrice is a keen amateur naturalist and not really interested in fashion or making polite chit-chat with stuffy neighbours. However, being seventeen and an only child, she is expected to ‘keep the Langton bloodline alive’ and marry (in her words) ‘some wealthy, inbred aristocrat to prop the estate up.’ When she talks about some inappropriate subjects at a dinner party designed to introduce her to a prospective partner, whom she describes as having ‘the sort of blank gaze more typically found in grazing animals’, she is sent to stay with her Uncle Leo in Italy for the summer. This does not seem like much of a punishment to Beatrice, and indeed the Italian countryside drenched in sunshine and peopled with artistic young people at her uncle’s villa, seems to be far from a sanction. There is her younger cousin Hero, Klaus and his sister Ursula and Ben, an artist. Beatrice and Ben cannot seem to stop arguing, but are compelled to encounter one another at every turn. Will this annoying young man be the only person to spoil her idyllic summer, or will more sinister undercurrents in 1930s Europe intrude on her new-found freedom?
If you enjoy books by Eva Ibbotson, such as The Secret Countess, or I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, then this light-hearted summer read based on Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare is one to try.
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