Description

‘I could not put this book down and loved every page.’ – Salena Godden

‘Humane, funny, surprising, profound.’ – Chris Power

‘A masterpiece.’ – David Keenan

Meet Drew Lord Haig, called upon to sing the obscure hit from his youth at a paramilitary event. Or Max, who recalls an eventful journey to a Christian film festival. Meet Mrs Dallesandro, in the tanning salon on her wedding anniversary dreaming of a teenage sexual experience. And Sonya, who scours the streets of Belfast for the missing posters of her dead son.

In Dance Move, the collection of stories from Wendy Erskine, we meet characters who are looking to wrest control of their lives, only to find themselves defined by the moment in their past that marked them.

In these stories – as in real life – the funny, the tender and the devastating go hand in hand. Full of warmth, the familiar and the strange, they are about what it means to live in the world, how far you can end up from where you came from, and what it means to look back.

Shortlisted for the irish Book Awards Short Story of the Year.
Shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize.

Publisher Review

Wendy Erskine is the greatest short story writer of her generation. Dance Move is a masterpiece. -- David Keenan The people that inhabit Wendy Erskine's stories are not merely 'characters', but instead are living, breathing entities whose lives, you feel, continue beyond the page. Few writers achieve this depth of human understanding so succinctly, and to read Dance Move is to step into their shadowed worlds. It also cements her status as simply one of the very best short story writers around. -- Benjamin Myers Erskine's stories open slight, but they contain more than it seems possible for short stories to contain. Their warmth and depth - even in their depictions of lives that are cold, or shallow, or hopelessly adrift - is testament not only to Erskine's unparalleled skill as a writer of short stories, but also to her humanity. Her characters are astonishingly alive. They rise off the pages of Dance Move and they lodge in the heart, and stay there. -- Keith Ridgway No one writes the bare-knuckle crossroads of sex and class like Wendy Erskine! -- Joanna Walsh There are few short story writers I look forward to reading as much as Wendy Erskine. Humane, funny, surprising, profound; in Dance Move she does it all. -- Chris Power Dance Move is a triumph, each story so perfectly formed, each character vividly set and startling. I could not put this book down and loved every page. Wendy Erskine is a profound and ingenious story teller, a magnificent writer of the highest calibre. -- Salena Godden So funny and so moving. Erskine's writing is like gentle razor blades, carving blissfully through to the real. -- Ruby Cowling