This morning, a pallet arrived at Ignite Villas stacked with the first print run of our newest book, Dancing Barefoot by Glyn Brown. We are hugely excited about this title, so expect to hear a lot about it over the next few months. How can we describe it? Well, for starters it’s a stunning piece of work. When Glyn first sent us the manuscript for her book it was instantly one of those all-too-rare pieces of writing which grabbed our attention: fascinating from start to finish, thoroughly researched, beautifully written.
It’s about a working-class woman scrabbling a living as a freelance journalist, just about getting by, relying on a casual menial job for a regular income, and whose relationship seems to be falling apart. Everything in her life is going wrong.
It’s also about seventeen working-class heroines from history – pirates, courtesans, tiger trainers, pilots, and more – women whose stories deserve to be told. They turn up one after the other (sometimes together) in her flat. In talking to them – and being talked to by them – will she find a way to change her own history?
Honestly, we could enthuse about this book for hours and still not do it justice. It’s a memoir and it’s a love letter to seventeen women whose achievements have been largely airbrushed from history. It’s a musing on class and misogyny and sexism, and it’s a rip-roaringly good read, a consummate piece of story-telling. It’s a bloody gem.
Dancing Barefoot is officially published in July this year, but – as we said – the copies arrived here this morning and it’s on sale on our website right now. Don’t hang about – get yourself a copy!
Trust us. You won’t regret it.
