The Ballroom: A Novel
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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.
Praise for The Ballroom
“The Ballroom successfully blends historical research with emotional intelligence to explore the tensions and trials of the human condition with grace and insight.”—New York Times Book Review
“Part historical novel and part romance, The Ballroom paints an incredibly rich portrait of the mentally stable forced to live in an asylum. [Anna] Hope transports readers inside the asylum, to feel the thick humidity of the stale summer air of the day room, and the gritty and brutal reality inside those walls.”—Booklist
“A compelling cast of emotionally resonant characters, as well as a bittersweet climax, render Hope’s second novel a powerful, memorable experience.”—Publishers Weekly
“Hope’s writing is consistently beautiful. . . . Recommended for readers who enjoy historical fiction by Sarah Waters or Emma Donoghue.”—Library Journal
“A beautifully wrought novel, a tender, heartbreaking and insightful exploration of the longings that survive in the most inhospitable environments.”—Sunday Express
“The Ballroom has all the intensity and lyricism of [Anna] Hope’s debut, Wake. At its heart is a tender and absorbing love story.”—Daily Mail
“Compelling and masterful . . . Anna Hope has proven once again that she is a luminary in historical fiction. . . . She delivers profound, poignant narratives that stir the emotions.”—Yorkshire Post
“As with Hope’s highly acclaimed debut novel, Wake, the writing is elegant and insightful; she writes beautifully about human emotion, landscape and weather.”—The Observer
“A brilliantly moving meditation on what it means to be ‘insane’ in a cruel world . . . All the characters are vividly and sensitively drawn. . . . Deeply moving.”—The Irish...
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Anna Hope. (2016). The Ballroom: A Novel. Random House Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Anna Hope. 2016. The Ballroom: A Novel. Random House Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Anna Hope, The Ballroom: A Novel. Random House Publishing Group, 2016.
MLA Citation (style guide)Anna Hope. The Ballroom: A Novel. Random House Publishing Group, 2016.
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- A searing novel of forbidden love on the Yorkshire moors—“a British version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (The Times U.K.)—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.
Praise for The Ballroom
“The Ballroom successfully blends historical research with emotional intelligence to explore the tensions and trials of the human condition with grace and insight.”—New York Times Book Review
“Part historical novel and part romance, The Ballroom paints an incredibly rich portrait of the mentally stable forced to live in an asylum. [Anna] Hope transports readers inside the asylum, to feel the thick humidity of the stale summer air of the day room, and the gritty and brutal reality inside those walls.”—Booklist
“A compelling cast of emotionally resonant characters, as well as a bittersweet climax, render Hope’s second novel a powerful, memorable experience.”—Publishers Weekly
“Hope’s writing is consistently beautiful. . . . Recommended for readers who enjoy historical fiction by Sarah Waters or Emma Donoghue.”—Library Journal
“A beautifully wrought novel, a tender, heartbreaking and insightful exploration of the longings that survive in the most inhospitable environments.”—Sunday Express
“The Ballroom has all the intensity and lyricism of [Anna] Hope’s debut, Wake. At its heart is a tender and absorbing love story.”—Daily Mail
“Compelling and masterful . . . Anna Hope has proven once again that she is a luminary in historical fiction. . . . She delivers profound, poignant narratives that stir the emotions.”—Yorkshire Post
“As with Hope’s highly acclaimed debut novel, Wake, the writing is elegant and insightful; she writes beautifully about human emotion, landscape and weather.”—The Observer
“A brilliantly moving meditation on what it means to be ‘insane’ in a cruel world . . . All the characters are vividly and sensitively drawn. . . . Deeply moving.”—The Irish... - reviews
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July 11, 2016
Patients in an asylum in 1911 find hope and redemption amid the bleakest circumstances in Hope’s heartbreaking second novel (following Wake). After a violent confrontation at the mill where she works, Ella Fay finds herself confined in the Sharston Asylum, a bleak institution on the edge of the Yorkshire moors where female patients are confined indoors, subjected to hard labor, and bullied by belligerent nurses. The one bright spot in the patients’ week is the weekly dance thrown in the asylum’s ballroom. Presided over by attending physician (and amateur musician) Charles Fulller, the dances are the one opportunity male and female patients have to interact. It’s here that Ella meets John Mulligan, an Irishman confined to the hospital for melancholia after the death of his wife and child. The two strike up a passionate affair, facilitated by the clandestine exchange of letters. Such a romance runs counter to Dr. Fuller’s philosophies on the treatment and welfare of his charges, which, to the modern reader, range from confusing (“excessive reading is dangerous for the female mind”) to outright backward (forced sterilization). And as Dr. Fuller’s own grip on reality begins to loosen, Ella and John’s chances for a happy life—together or apart—begin slipping away. Though the subject matter is occasionally difficult, a compelling cast of emotionally resonant characters, as well as a bittersweet climax, render Hope’s second novel a powerful, memorable experience.
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September 1, 2016
In her second historical novel, Hope (Wake) vividly evokes a claustrophobic feeling of both physical and psychological confinement. Men and women are only permitted to meet once a week at the Sharston Asylum in 1911 Yorkshire, in the ornate ballroom where the asylum staff put on lively Friday night dances for their restless patients. Former factory girl Ella Fay and melancholic Irishman John Mulligan pursue their mutual attraction by secretly exchanging letters between dances, and the two fall in love despite the asylum's restrictive atmosphere and the harsh punishments meted out for transgressions. This furtive romance is soon threatened by the sinister attentions of a tortured young doctor whose greatest ambition is to impress the leaders of Britain's eugenics movement. The demented physician is the most developed of the novel's protagonists, so readers not in the mood to be disturbed may want to look elsewhere. Hope's writing is consistently beautiful no matter how unnerving her subject matter, however, and the story sheds important light on the eugenics movement popular in the early 20th century. VERDICT Recommended for readers who enjoy historical fiction by Sarah Waters or Emma Donoghue.--Mara Bandy, Champaign P.L., IL
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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In 1911, upon a windy moor in Yorkshire, England, sits an enormous facility that houses society's most derelict: the poor and the insane. Sharston Asylum is home to thousands of men and women committed against their will. By modern medical standards, treatment and consideration of the involuntarily committed on the eve of WWI was barbaric. Patients perceived three options: escape, die, or convince someone, somehow, that they were sane enough to leave. From the doctors' perspective, treatments for the mentally ill included isolation and forced sterilization. However, Dr. Charles Fuller has his beliefs and methods tested as he becomes infatuated with two of his patients, Ella and John, who against all odds grow close after they first meet when Ella is trying to escape. Part historical novel and part romance, The Ballroom paints an incredibly rich portrait of the mentally stable forced to live in an asylum. Hope (Wake, 2014) transports readers inside the asylum, to feel the thick humidity of the stale summer air of the day room, and the gritty and brutal reality inside those walls.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)
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- A searing novel of forbidden love on the Yorkshire moors—“a British version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (The Times U.K.)—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.
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