The Dancing Barber Chapter Summary

The Dancing Barber by AC Michael is a novel embedded with many intertwined stories. It narrates the time period after Ukraine was captured by the Soviet Union. The novel portrays the lives of people who escaped from Ukraine and how they tried to re-establish themselves. It also narrates the atrocities committed by the Soviet Union on the Ukrainian people. However, the main story revolves around a barber who is in the process of choreographing his dream ballet show but encounters a number of hazards and obstacles in his way.
There are many characters in the book and all the characters have equal importance in the story. There is Taras, who makes his living as a barber but aspires to be a great ballet master. The author showed this character

He is being helped in his endeavours by Taras’s wife Halyna. Halyna is the strongest and most likable character in the novel as it is she, who works hard to pay the bills and put the food on the table. It is she who takes a stand against her bully husband when he crosses the line. Hers is the only character whom I liked in this novel.
There are many other characters also who have special roles in the book, like Halyna’s twin sisters and also a rich man named Ivan. These people also play a significant part in creating many mishaps in the plot. There are several other side characters like many ballet dancers including Halyna’s daughter Sofia.
Overall I found the book too descriptive. The unnecessary dragging of plot induces boredom. At several places in the book, I felt that certain things are unnecessary explained. The author took a long time to evolve the plot and actual storyline. I have to drag myself from page to page in the initial chapters of the book because of the slow pace of the story. Though the choice of words was interesting in the start, the poor sentence structure ruined the effect of good vocabulary. Interactions between the characters were dull and instead of entertaining, they only served to aggravate the reader. I was very irritated with the frequent use of article ‘THE’ at inappropriate places in a lot of sentences. Though the author used it to show non-English speakers, I find that it hindered the flow of my reading and irritated me to no