The Paris Dancer by Nicola Rayner

 

The Paris Dancer by Nicola Rayner.

Published 13th February 2025 by Aria.

From the cover of the book:

Paris, 1938. Annie Mayer arrives in France with dreams of becoming a ballerina. But when the war reaches Paris, she's forced to keep her Jewish heritage a secret. Then a fellow dancer offers her a lifeline: a ballroom partnership that gives her a new identity. Together, Annie and her partner captivate audiences across occupied Europe, using her newfound fame and alias to aid the Resistance.

New York, 2012. Miriam, haunted by her past, travels from London to New York to settle her great-aunt Esther's estate. Among Esther's belongings, she discovers notebooks detailing a secret family history and the story of a brave dancer who risked everything to help Jewish families during the war.

As Miriam uncovers Esther's life in Europe, she realises the story has been left for her to finish. Grappling with loss and the possibility of new love, Miriam must find the strength to reconcile her past and embrace her future.

***********

June, 2012. Miriam (Mim to her friends) travels to New York from England to deal with her great-aunt Esther's estate as she requested. Struggling with the weight of her own issues, this is bound to add to the burden of grief she is already labouring under, but a serendipitous meeting on the plane with the handsome dancer, Lucky, might prove a distraction during her trip.

Mim begins to sort through Esther's possessions, and discovers a series of notebooks in which her great-aunt recorded her family history in Europe, during World War II. They tell of family secrets that Mim knows nothing about, especially Esther's connection to a brave music hall dancer who risked her own life to protect Jewish families like hers...

The story unfurls in two timelines flipping between Mim's time in New York in 2012, and Esther's story in worn-torn Europe through the handwritten volumes of the memoir she has left behind for Mim to discover - and both sides of the novel carry weighty emotional themes.

Mim's own story is one which has her bound by a paralysing state of guilt-ridden grief over her history with a former partner and the resulting tragedy that tore her best friend Frankie away from her. Loss and a sense of responsibility mean she cannot move forward, or allow herself to get close to another person, and Rayner keeps you guessing about exactly why with well-judged suspense. 

Weaving in and out of Mim's journey, Rayner immerses you completely in Esther's life in Paris of the late 1930s and 1940s, delving into the horror of Nazi occupation and the palpable fear of those of Jewish descent as the Holocaust plays out. Esther's tale is a heart-breaking one, but Rayner also brings alive the vibrant music hall scene of Paris through Esther's family and friends - particularly Annie, the Jewish dancer from Canada whose tale of resistance is based on the very real Florence Waren (you will find yourself diving down some rabbit holes about her).

Tying the two strands of the novel together, Rayner uses dance to absolute perfection. Lucky's quest to help Mim through finding the dance that speaks to her soul in the present, and all the atmospheric moments of time, place, and character-led loveliness in Esther's complicated history, fuse in a choreography all of their own to examine themes of love, friendship, guilt, sacrifice, reconciliation, family, sisters, and sexuality that echo through the novel. 

This book easily makes it on to my pile of 2025 stunners, and it is impossible to do it justice in a brief review. Rayner explores so much about a wealth of emotions, dealing with loss, and forgiveness, and the whole story thrums with the power of music and rhythm in a way that is hard to put into words. I loved it. Tears were shed...

The Paris Dancer is available to buy now in paperback, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to Aria for sending me a proof of this book in return for an honest review.

About the author:

Born in South Wales, Nicola Rayner is a novelist and dance writer based in London.

She is the author of The Girl Before You, which was picked by the Observer as a debut to look out for in 2019, optioned for television and translated into multiple languages. Her second novel, You and Me, was published by Avon, HarperCollins, in 2020.

In her day job as a journalist, Nicola has written about dance for almost two decades, cutting her teeth on the tango section of Time Out Buenos Aires. She edited the magazine Dance Today from 2010 to 2015 and worked as assistant editor of Dancing Times, the UK's leading dance publication, from 2019 until 2022.

She continues to dance everything from ballroom to breakdance, with varying degrees of finesse.