Pippa Passes

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.

Set in 20th-century Venice, this effervescent, thoroughly enchanting modern-day fairy tale is spiked with a handful of up-to-date plot twists. At 17, lovely, fresh-scrubbed Pippa Fane is the youngest, least experienced member of an English dance troupe on tour in Italy. Arriving in Venice, Pippa is swept away by the ancient city's magic-and intrigued by Nicolo, the handsome gondolier whom she twice encounters on the first day of her stay. Nicolo, protege of the gracious Marchesa dell'Orlando, pursues Pippa, hoping that she will sing with his band when they play at the prestigious Hotel Imperiale. Meanwhile, Pippa's dancing career leaps ahead, thanks to a convenient accident and the machinations of the company's ballet mistress, Angharad Fullerton. Unfortunately, Angharad is not the fairy godmother Pippa imagines, and her attempted seduction of the young dancer results in an ugly, disturbing mess. With the help of the marchesa, however, Pippa triumphs as both a dancer and a singer. When the time comes to choose between her blossoming career as a dancer and a role offering a more conventional happy ending, Pippa mines wisdom from her recent experiences to make the right decision. In less able hands, these highly romantic goings-on would seem contrived, but Godden's graceful storytelling keeps readers enthralled, with gorgeous Venice and the nitty-gritty of the dance troupe's routine providing a convincing backdrop for her winsome ingenue.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Godden (Great Grandfather's House, 1993, etc.) is known for sentimental, old-fashioned morality tales, and this absurdity is no exception. Pippa is the youngest and newest member of a British ballet troupe traveling to Venice, where she and the other dancers attract the attention of young Italian men, who speak in charming broken English. Unfortunately, while Godden apparently has a great, blind love for Venice and includes lengthy passages of local color (``the pageant of the piazza, its colonnades, the domes''), she has failed to bone up on some basic facts (i.e., the Italian version of the name Paul is Paolo, not ``Paulo''). From the opening pages, it is perfectly clear where this one is headed, particularly since Godden occasionally pops in a section from the side of Nicol•, a young Venetian gondolier. Pippa's trials--for a young woman must always have trials in this type of book--are musty. Godden tries to wed the primmer and homophobic values of an earlier era with contemporary characters. Pippa struggles to balance her admiration for the ballet mistress Angharad with Angharad's mysterious dislike for her best friend Juliet, whom Angharad calls ``common and...a tart,'' and to combine singing with Nicol•'s fledgling band with her dance rehearsals and performances. She also befriends Nicol•'s employer, a wealthy, church-going British marchesa living the grand life. When Angharad makes a clumsy pass at her prot‚g‚e, Pippa flees to Nicol•, who is sleeping in his gondola, which is about as realistic as a New York cabbie camping out in Central Park for the night. Sex here is bewildering: Angharad is fired because she should not be working around pretty girls; the word lesbian is never uttered. On the heterosexual front, Pippa is offended that Nicol• has taken care of birth control. Nicol•, too, turns out to have his faults, and Pippa leaves Venice--what else?--older and wiser. It would be difficult to find a clich‚ about love, Italy, or art that Godden has missed. As full of garbage as Venice's famed canals. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Godden's voice is that of a British gentlewoman in sensible shoes: well bred, practical, spirited, and romantic. In this charming coming-of-age story, redolent of a previous era, she has created a fresh-faced, English-rose of a heroine whose enthusiasm makes each adventure seem new. Seventeen-year-old ballet student Pippa is asked to go to Venice with the Midlands City Ballet. Despite a grueling dance schedule, she manages to slip away and experience real Venetian life through friendships with a marchese and marchesa and a love affair with a gorgeous gondolier. Along the way, tension builds in the corps when Pippa is singled out for promotion to soloist--and the amorous advances of the company's ballet mistress. Told with elegant restraint, this novel is a mosaic of evocative details, illustrating a girl on the brink of womanhood in one of the world's most romantic cities. Deanna Larson-Whiterod

The ever-popular, prolific Godden (Coromandel Sea Change, LJ 9/1/91) grapples with themes of lost innocence and incipient maturity in her most recent novel. The eponymous teenage heroine, Pippa Fane, is the youngest member of the Midlands City Ballet. Chosen to go with the com-pany on its Italian tour, she becomes fascinated with Venice, confused by romantic overtures from admirers of both sexes, and challenged by the demands of her dancing troupe. Essentially a rite-of-passage story, this work is also a paean to the eternal beauty of Venice, and balletomanes will relish Godden's detailed portrayal of the dancer's milieu. The characters are a bit unconvincing, but Godden is a first-rate storyteller, skillfully combining a vivid sense of place with an optimistic plot to create a light, engaging novel. A good choice for public libraries.
Sister M. Anna Falbo, Villa Maria Coll. Lib., Buffalo, N.Y.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.