Anna’s Dance

Michele Levy’s lyrically devised novel is a colorful immersion into both Balkan history and the emotional journey of self-discovery of its young protagonist, whose 1968 wandering through Europe touches on everything from her own Jewish heritage and the darkly violent history of the former Yugoslavia to slavic food, art and the pure and sensual pleasures of youth. The journey of the energetic and insightful Anna Rossi, like the title of this book, dances through several stages of rather complex self-understanding, romantic relationships, and indecisive actions –– all of it carried along by a wonderfully constructed and sometimes dreamy prose style that often implies much more than it says. I found the author’s observations about the geography and people of Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia especially intriguing, since that part of the world often gets described with generalities. Levy, however, offers nuanced brush strokes instead of cliches; deft observation instead of memes plucked conveniently from newspaper headlines. This could have easily turned into another backpacker coming-of-age story sprinkled with squishy romantic interludes and youthful clowning. Instead of love with a Eurail Pass, it’s a sensitive portrait of a young woman who wrestles with life’s key questions in an honest and sometimes raw manner. Equally, Levy’s prose is first class, making her one of those rare authors whose sentences are worth reading twice, as in: “The bright white of the napkin matched his arctic smile…” Likewise, some chapters are filled with enough sadness and dark intrigue to match the mythic woes of the old Serbian Kosovo poems that Levy mentions in this rewarding novel.