Highways and Dancehalls

Susan Patrick is a librarian at Ryerson Polytechnical University.

This Governor General’s Award–nominated first novel is a powerful
one. It portrays a specific slice of life—the gritty realism of
stripclubs and strippers on the road—with what appears to be accuracy
and a fine sense of detail (which includes the material the strippers’
costumes are made of and how much they cost; the muscles pulled and
bruises gained in dancing contortions; the relationships between the
women; the obscene calls of the audience and the strippers’ unspoken
retorts; and the strippers’ conflicting feelings, from ironic
detachment and feelings of power over men who only “think with their
balls” to despising what they have to do, and keeping their bodies
fueled by drugs in order to perform).

This first-person narrative in diary form chronicles the emotional
journey of 17-year-old Sarah (the person)/Tabitha (the stripper), whose
body is scarred from an operation, and whose psyche is scarred by being
different (from her childhood battle with colitis) and by her father’s
desertion of the family. The reader is led to understand the complicated
mental processes that lead an intelligent girl from a “good” family
to become a stripper—to assuage her scars and feel beautiful and
powerful, to overcome her lack of sense of self, to punish herself and
her family. Although these highways and dancehalls may be rough
territory unfamiliar to many readers, the novel is compelling reading.
Atkinson’s writing both draws one in to Sarah/Tabitha’s external and
internal worlds, and draws out sympathy, caring, and understanding in
the reader.