Dancing on Coral

by Glenda Adams, Susan Wyndham (Introduction)

Growing up in Sydney in the 1960s, Lark Watter dreams only of escape. When she meets handsome American Tom at university she thinks she's found her ticket out. But as Lark embarks on the adventure of a lifetime, following Tom to New York by freighter, all is not as she had imagined it would be . . .

Genres: Australia, Fiction, Novels, 20th Century, Literary Fiction

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Glenda Emilie Adams (née Felton; 30 December 1939 – 11 July 2007) was an Australian novelist and short story writer, probably best known as the winner of the 1987 Miles Franklin Award for Dancing on Coral. She was a teacher of creative writing, and helped develop writing programs.

Adams' work is found in her own books and short story collections, in numerous short story anthologies, and in journals and magazines.Her essays, stories and articles have been published in, among other magazines, Meanjin, The New York Times Book Review, Panorama, Quadrant, Southerly, Westerly, The Sydney Morning Herald, The (London) Observer and The Village Voice.

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately I suspect this book has not aged particularly well. I was curious to read a book about 1950s Australia and beyond, from the perspective of an ambitious woman who experienced it.

Many of the positive reviews of Dancing on Coral mention how funny it is. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t there, so to speak, but I didn’t laugh once. I didn’t see the humour.

I found the characters mostly very unlikeable, the main character strangely passive and blank. The ending was weird and unsatisfying.

As much as I would like to recommend this novel, which has been billed as a lost classic, I would have to say look elsewhere unless you have a real fondness for the writings of this period.

[Calzean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable but could have been better. The book has three parts - Lark's life in Sydney, her journey on the freighter and then her life in the US.
Lark has come from a family of dreamers so she is a dreamer. She dreams of travel, of the perfect life, of excitement. Her mother and father are eccentric but loving. Her infatuation and marriage to Tom is infantile. The satire on the 60s/70s bohemians is a bit passe'.

[Trevor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very much if it’s time, not sure if it would win any awards if it was written today.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adams certainly has fun satirising group rhetoric in Dancing on Coral.  Dated by allusions to the late 1950s by her protagonist Lark Watters' visit to the cinema to see Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and her father's ambition to be on the Jack Davey 1950s radio show, Dancing on Coral pokes fun at the university set exemplified by the 'Sydney Push'.   What I know of the them is derived from my reading of Richard Appleton's Appo, Recollections of a Member of the Sydney Push , but the poseurs, inane babble and heavy drinking of Dancing on Coral seem authentic.

Lark had watched Donna Bird for several years as she floated around the quadrangle, looking like some sort of court jester, always arguing and waving her arms about, always surrounded by groups of the important students—the libertarian who wore no shoes and tied his khaki trousers with a piece of rope and wrote lewd columns for the newspaper; the architecture student who was caught by a security guard on the floor of the library stacks with the psychology fresher; the leader of the student conservative club who was known only by his initials. (p.22)

Lark stumbles into this bunch of pseudo-intellectuals when she meets her first American.  Sprung at the cash register for hiding an extra pat of butter under her roll to save the extra penny, she is defended by Tom Brown:

"Good for you," he said, "fighting the system like that.  Butter belongs to the people.  Butter and guns and art.  They should be free, and if they're not, the people should take them." (p.24)

Tom is studying urban anthropology.  He's a social theorist and, in his spare time, a critic of society.  And when Lark timidly suggests that the 'anthropological' activities of Tom's mentor Manfred Bird in the Pacific makes him a plunderer, stealing art from societies that couldn't protect themselves', she is promptly patronised by Bird's daughter Donna (who turns out to be Lark's nemesis):

"It's called preservation," said Donna quickly.  "Sometimes the natives just threw away the stuff, their funerary carvings and so on. The Rockefellers and my father just wanted to preserve art.  Art is what matters." (p.27-8)

Tom suggests that they take Lark on as a 'project.'

"She's young and inexperienced," said Tom to Donna, at the same time patting Lark's hand in a fatherly way.  He turned back to Lark.  "Donna should know," he said gently, like a doctor at an invalid's bedside.  "After all, she's the one who knows them all.  Say," and he turned back to Donna Bird, "what say we take her in hand." (p.28)

Well, they do, and it mostly consists of getting involved in dubious pranks, infantile protests, a lot of long-winded pompous rhetoric from Tom while Lark fends off drunken advances from young men who lecture her about not perpetuating outdated morality.

Lark doesn't really know what she wants to do but the one thing that she craves, is to leave Australia.  Her parents are eccentrics but life, as far as she can tell, is lived elsewhere, and so she applies uselessly for jobs which offer free travel.  Her interview at Qantas is cringeworthy: she is told that "in addition to a deep desire to serve others, our hostesses have to be good-looking girls.  The best of the crop."

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/01/21/d...

[Joan Kerr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Glenda Adams won the Miles Franklin in 1987 for Dancing On Coral, but until Text Classics republished it in 2013 it was hard to get it or her other prize-winning novel Longleg, which also won two major awards. Why has she faded into obscurity? Maybe it was because she lived many years of her life in the US, and the Australian literary establishment gets a bit sniffy about that.

I’m here to tell you that you should get your hands on Dancing On Coral without further ado. It has what I think of as a uniquely Australian surreal eye on the ordinary, it’s a cool and deadly satire on the hippiespeak of the 1960’s, and it has a wonderful heroine, an innocent abroad who, of course, grows up. “A comic epic”, Elizabeth Jolley called it.

Lark Watter, daughter of the suburban Don Quixote Henry and his pragmatic wife, has been running away from home regularly since the age of four.

' “I’m going now,” she often said, taking the suitcase and the umbrella, standing at the front door.

“She’s going now,” said Henry Watter, if he said anything at all. Or, “It’s a tricky place, the world. You’ve got to be sharp to manage it.”

“Leave her be, she’ll be back,” said Mrs Watter. “This is her home. She knows that.”

At university Lark falls under the spell of the smug American academic Tom and follows him to America in the company of Tom’s friend Donna Bird, one of fiction’s most ghastly females. Their trip on a cargo ship, which includes the dancing on coral episode, is a slapstick masterpiece, but there’s an undercurrent of menace that Lark only understands much later on. Lark does manage to ensnare the self-absorbed Tom into marriage:

“I imagine that you, Tom, agree to take,” he hesitated, unsure of her name, “Lark – is it? – for your wife, and Lark, I imagine that you don’t mind taking Tom for your husband, right?”

Both Lark and Tom nodded and said, “Right.”

“If anyone has any objections, now’s the time to say so,” said the minister….

“Then I guess you are man and wife.” He looked around. “Hey,” he added, “That’s neat-o, keen-o, far out and groovy.”

And that was that.'

Everything is on Tom’s terms, of course, and Lark only regrets that she hasn’t got “a first class mind” as so many of his previous girlfriends had, apparently. His mentor Manfred Bird is an anthropologist who steals native artefacts to “preserve” them and destroys statues he considers obscene. Apart from Tom and his daughter Donna, he has a devoted acolyte in his wife Portia, a former student and now mother of three children who are constantly under “thrit of dith” (Portia is from New Zealand) if they disturb him.

For all the fun, though, there’s a real stability at the base of the narrative. Lark’s upbringing may have been eccentric, but there’s no doubt of her parents’ feeling for her, and as her mother says in the end, “you have made your own way in this tricky world”.

I can’t do better than quote Barbara Jefferis: “There is no other Australian novelist writing at present with such a finely juudged mixture of zany wit and unforced wisdom, with such a control of character and material, such urbanity and exuberance.”

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting, memorable, coming of age story about a young woman named ‘Lark’.
Lark grew up in Sydney in the 1950s and 1960s. She wants to see the world. Her teenage boyfriend, Solomon Black, leaves to go to America where he marries.

Lark, in Sydney meets an intelligent American man named Tom, and a young woman named Donna Bird. Tom and Donna are intellectuals who do political activist work, including writing articles and staging mock events to highlight insures such as the gullibility of the media. Tom flies to New York on business while Donna and Lark gain cheap passage on a merchant ship from Sydney to New York. Lark finds Donna objectionable and befriends an Australian crew member. There are no other passengers on the merchant ship.

Whilst the characters seem a little underdeveloped, there is very good plot momentum throughout the novel, with lots of plot twists.

This book was the winner of the 1987 Miles Franklin Award.

[Rowena Eddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Satiric, witty and fun. A skewering of pretentious academia.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book. I liked the writing style and it kept me engaged. It was interesting but it wasn’t outstanding.

[Erika · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing style made me think. I definitely enjoyed reading this book and felt the chaos egged me on. I felt as confused and lacking as Lark at times, holding on to threads of the story only to see them snap or transform in a way that had me rethinking everything. I trusted some characters only to find that was misguided and in the end these characters were shown in true human form, with both dark and shadow clearly evident in every single one of them. I give this book 3.5 stars.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book difficult. The characters are awful - Lark was insipid and Tom a piece of work; Donna Bird and her father, just mad. As a satire on intelligentsia in the 60s, it works, but I just don't think I got it!

[Caitlin Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read this one several times. It is odd and wonderful. So well written. On one level, a satire of 1960s left-wing intellectuals. On another, a coming of age novel. Also, a play with language, and almost surreal. So many ways to see this excellent work of fiction.

[John Neil · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could not believe someone who at least attended university could be so well: "callow". It is not a hard read but it is an oddity - not sure why I finished it.