Lola Dances by Victor J. Banis

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Sometimes I would be able to have more words in English to describe a book, cause I really want to transfer to you the joy and the emotion I felt reading it.

Lola Dances is not a simple book. It's a powerful novel, and it's strong but real. Terry is a skinny Irish guy in the Bowery of New York, with a dream: he wants to be a dancer. He loves all the thing that are artistic, like the opera he eavesdrops outside Castle Garden in Battery Park, or the beautiful dresses he sees on the stage. He has a lean body and he knows he can be a dancer. Even if he has to suffer the mocks of the other guys. But even if those guys moleste him, he sees among them a young guy, Tom, who looks at him with hungry eyes full of... desire? Is it possible? Terry doesn't know nothing about sex and even if he knows that in the Bowery there are places where men who want men can go, he has never imagined that someone could really want him.

And so he is totally unprepared when a spoilt child of a wealthy family rapes him. He doesn't know how to react and decides to face him openly, but he ends being accuse of blackmailed. Tom helps him and he would be even willing to help him more, cause he has feelings for Terry, feelings that nor him or Terry can place. But Terry can't believe in the gentle eyes of Tom and he runs away. His brother Brian, even if he believes it's all fault of Terry, brings him on the wild moutains, on a miner small town.

Here Brian takes Terry as a beaten housekeeper, and after some time, also him rapes Terry, and continue to do that for months. In his misery, Terry finds another dream to clinge to not fall apart: he falls in love for Joshua, who lives near Terry's cabin. Joshua seems interested in Terry, but he can't move on the fact that Terry is a man.

When life for Brian and Terry go worst than ever, Terry makes an hazard move: when the saloon's singer of the twon leaves suddently her work, Terry takes her place on the stage, disguises himself with the features of Lola Valdez, a singer and a dancer. Success strucks immediately, and Terry manages also to have a night with Joshua, but the morning after he discovers that Joshua and Brian have left the town together and Terry is loney again. But now Terry is not more an helpless boy, now he is Lola, SHE is Lola, and fortune smiles on her.

Years after she arrives in San Francisco, wealthy and beloved, and she finds again Tom... But Tom is her first love, of it's Joshua who helds the key of her heart? And Tom wants Lola or Terry?

This is a wonderful rides along the ups and downs of Terry's life, and you will feel sorry for him, but also happy for his fortune. Terry is a shy guy, and strangely he seems to acquire strenght when he wears Lola's dress: where like a man he can't protect himself, like Lola she is the master of her destiny.

All the men in Terry's life, Tom, Brian, Joshua, will help to forge the man who will become Terry, but only the one who wants nothing from him if not is love, will be the one who will have him forever.

Even if I'm not an expert of that part if history, I think the book is wonderfully detailed, and also the use of words is carefully crafted. For example it's tender to see the change in Terry's speaking from the poor boy of the Bowery to the dance star of the Barbary Coast.

http://www.mlrpress.com/ShowBook.php?book=LOLA0001

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Comments

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

Yes, you should say it. On an Amazon's review someone said his Standish was like a bodice rippers by Johanna Lindsey, and commenting on it, I asked him if he was offended by the term (Bodice Rippers was used in the past like a dispregiative term). He said that he would be happy to do the money Mrs Lindsey does and that his are better Breeches than Bodice Rippers.