cover image Dancing at the Victory Cafe

Dancing at the Victory Cafe

Helene Wiggin. St. Martin's Press, $21.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-312-13954-4

Set primarily in the English town of Lichfield during WWII, this first novel is nearly as quaint and hard to swallow as the war-time rationed recipes--like Spam Fritters--scattered throughout its pages. Dorrie Goodman is a shy, 17-year-old waitress at the Victory Cafe, owned by the plucky Belle Morton. Despite her fundamentalist minister father's beatings (to keep her from ``sinful'' ways), Dorrie falls in love with a black American soldier stationed briefly in town. Charlie ``Lucky'' Gordon awakens her to jazz, dancing and her own sexuality (``I never thought it would feel like this, melting together, sticky and warm,'' she tells a friend). Racism--English and American--brings the affair to a tragic close, but not before Dorrie finds herself pregnant. Setting off the soap operatics, meanwhile, are Belle's determined efforts to give the cafe menu some panache. Ultimately, the fates of Dorrie and Belle are drawn inexorably together by Dorrie's baby, who, unbeknownst to its mother, is adopted by Belle immediately after birth. Wiggin, who tells her story in the present tense, evokes war-time Britain in bright, patriotic colors, but any sense of victory is dampened by main characters as slimly drawn as the too-large supporting cast, and by choppy, melodramatic storytelling. (Jan.)