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Ruby and her family used to live in a nice house, without a care in the world. The Ruby’s dad died, her mother went out to work and they moved to a house in The Yards, close to the packinghouse where her mother worked. At fifteen Ruby begins working in the same packinghouse, putting pigs knuckles into brine filled jars, when her mother develops severe arthritis and loses her job. She keeps her family afloat but she sees her and her younger sister’s prospects disappear.
Then one night, after being thrown out of a dance for fighting, she catches the eye of local tough guy Paulie and he tells her about a job that will change her life. Ruby takes a job as a taxi dancer, renting her self to lonely men who frequent The Starlight for a nickel a dance. Soon Ruby has everything she dreamed of while packing pig’s knuckles, but she also learns plenty of things she never wanted to know.
Every time I went to pick up ‘Ten Cents a Dance’ I was excited. I could not wait to get back to it and I was glad it was a little longer than some YA books, because that just meant there was more of it to enjoy. The book is set largely in taxi-dancing clubs, which are an area of American history I’d never heard about before. I’ll be looking into it now because the history of taxi-dancing seems to contain everything I love about the 1940s, like jazz, sleaze, back street glamour and gangsters.
Christine Fletcher brings the taxi-dancing world alive and although the industry has some pretty obvious parallels with pro she makes it sound like like a fun, glamorous lifestyle. That’s what it must have seemed like to girls used to earning a pittance in box factories and packinghouses. The gowns and presents Ruby buys for herself and others weren’t overly described but they still sounded like gorgeous treasures.
The sections set behind the scenes of the dance floor are full of cattiness and camaraderie, creating a claustrophobic, yet vigorous picture of female crowding and competitiveness. There is the kind of rivalry and gossip you might have found in any job where masses of women were fighting for pay and prestige. The back stabbing is deliciously bitter and the friendship Ruby forms with Peggy is full of those illicit conversations we all keep from our mother. All of this added to the back street glamour of the book, where the intriguing darkness of seedy situations produced excitement and fun times for the characters.
There’s a lot of conflict in the novel. Ruby’s not afraid of a fight and her spunky, uncompromising attitude causes many of the brawls. Probably the most well drawn instance of tension is the sustained one between Ruby and her mother. Despite being decidedly grubby sometimes, taxi-dancing gives Ruby a measure of independence and thrusts her into adult situations. She earns her own money, stays out at night and gets involved with men her mother would never approve of. When her mother remarries she’s instructed to return to her old way of live, as a dependent child who goes to school. Readers may expect Ruby to be excited about returning to education and innocence but Ruby has grown to love her independence and her lifestyle. Ruby’s mother refuses to see that her experience in the world of work (she tells her mother that she works as a telephone operator) will have changed her and she expects her to give up her freedom when the family no longer needs her wage. The complexity of the mother daughter struggle for control of Ruby was extremely realistic. Ruby’s mother is also slightly hypocritical, at times she seems to know Ruby isn’t working at the telephone connection yet she continues to take her wages until she finds a different solution. This elevates her character above the stereotypical saintly and shamed mother and it allows the reader to empathise more with Ruby. Ruby’s created her own set of values which stem from her mother’s moral teachings, but which would never be acceptable to her mother, for example in Ruby’s mind she remains a ‘good girl’ because she doesn’t sleep with her customers but when her mother finds out what Ruby has been doing that fact doesn’t matter to her.
There’s a cracking plot that picks up power towards the end as Ruby’s life dancing at The Starlight is disrupted by her mother’s changing circumstances and the second world war changes everything. Racial tensions rise(Ruby’s non-preachy gradual acceptance of different races was actually one of my favourite elements of the book), Ruby realises Paulie is not the man of her dreams, which I started to think as soon as he suggested she dance at The Starlight, and a new romantic possibility begins to emerge. All this is guaranteed to have readers racing through the chapters to see what happens, but it’s important to make an effort to slow down because Fletcher’s forties world is so rich in detail that it would be a shame to miss anything.
Reviewer X has a fab guest post where Christine Fletcher talks about why she's backing historical heroines every time. If you've reviewed 'Ten Cents a Dance' please leave a review link here and I'll post it under my post.
Other reviews
Fledgling
Then one night, after being thrown out of a dance for fighting, she catches the eye of local tough guy Paulie and he tells her about a job that will change her life. Ruby takes a job as a taxi dancer, renting her self to lonely men who frequent The Starlight for a nickel a dance. Soon Ruby has everything she dreamed of while packing pig’s knuckles, but she also learns plenty of things she never wanted to know.
Every time I went to pick up ‘Ten Cents a Dance’ I was excited. I could not wait to get back to it and I was glad it was a little longer than some YA books, because that just meant there was more of it to enjoy. The book is set largely in taxi-dancing clubs, which are an area of American history I’d never heard about before. I’ll be looking into it now because the history of taxi-dancing seems to contain everything I love about the 1940s, like jazz, sleaze, back street glamour and gangsters.
Christine Fletcher brings the taxi-dancing world alive and although the industry has some pretty obvious parallels with pro she makes it sound like like a fun, glamorous lifestyle. That’s what it must have seemed like to girls used to earning a pittance in box factories and packinghouses. The gowns and presents Ruby buys for herself and others weren’t overly described but they still sounded like gorgeous treasures.
The sections set behind the scenes of the dance floor are full of cattiness and camaraderie, creating a claustrophobic, yet vigorous picture of female crowding and competitiveness. There is the kind of rivalry and gossip you might have found in any job where masses of women were fighting for pay and prestige. The back stabbing is deliciously bitter and the friendship Ruby forms with Peggy is full of those illicit conversations we all keep from our mother. All of this added to the back street glamour of the book, where the intriguing darkness of seedy situations produced excitement and fun times for the characters.
There’s a lot of conflict in the novel. Ruby’s not afraid of a fight and her spunky, uncompromising attitude causes many of the brawls. Probably the most well drawn instance of tension is the sustained one between Ruby and her mother. Despite being decidedly grubby sometimes, taxi-dancing gives Ruby a measure of independence and thrusts her into adult situations. She earns her own money, stays out at night and gets involved with men her mother would never approve of. When her mother remarries she’s instructed to return to her old way of live, as a dependent child who goes to school. Readers may expect Ruby to be excited about returning to education and innocence but Ruby has grown to love her independence and her lifestyle. Ruby’s mother refuses to see that her experience in the world of work (she tells her mother that she works as a telephone operator) will have changed her and she expects her to give up her freedom when the family no longer needs her wage. The complexity of the mother daughter struggle for control of Ruby was extremely realistic. Ruby’s mother is also slightly hypocritical, at times she seems to know Ruby isn’t working at the telephone connection yet she continues to take her wages until she finds a different solution. This elevates her character above the stereotypical saintly and shamed mother and it allows the reader to empathise more with Ruby. Ruby’s created her own set of values which stem from her mother’s moral teachings, but which would never be acceptable to her mother, for example in Ruby’s mind she remains a ‘good girl’ because she doesn’t sleep with her customers but when her mother finds out what Ruby has been doing that fact doesn’t matter to her.
There’s a cracking plot that picks up power towards the end as Ruby’s life dancing at The Starlight is disrupted by her mother’s changing circumstances and the second world war changes everything. Racial tensions rise(Ruby’s non-preachy gradual acceptance of different races was actually one of my favourite elements of the book), Ruby realises Paulie is not the man of her dreams, which I started to think as soon as he suggested she dance at The Starlight, and a new romantic possibility begins to emerge. All this is guaranteed to have readers racing through the chapters to see what happens, but it’s important to make an effort to slow down because Fletcher’s forties world is so rich in detail that it would be a shame to miss anything.
Reviewer X has a fab guest post where Christine Fletcher talks about why she's backing historical heroines every time. If you've reviewed 'Ten Cents a Dance' please leave a review link here and I'll post it under my post.
Other reviews
Fledgling
