Dancing with the daffodils book summary

Val an English teacher takes an exchange position in Australia to recover from the death of his lover He stages Romeo and Juliet at his school and becomes close friends with Anna the head teacher Oliver who plays Romeo falls in love with Val and although the feeling is mutual because of his position Val cannot allow the relationship to develop Val struggles with his feelings unable to come to terms with Oliver s youthful seductive ways and unable to reconcile his heartache over David s death with his developing affection for Oliver which he must reject both internally and externally And at the same time he must make a life for himself in a country far from his friends and the world he knows How do you decide between love and duty Dancing With The DaffodilsI just have so many issues with the relationship here I knew what I was getting into so I can t complain about the teacher student aspect of it even if as a woman of Val s age and the mother of a child close to Oliver s age I can t help but wince at the age gap violation of trust and abuse of position but The characters themselves are just so very fucked up and their relationship is so screwed once they realise that the things they were looking for an escape from grief and guilt an adult to accept and love them unconditionally isn t what they got I was cringing most of the way through their scenes together as there was just no connection other than physical attraction. Dancing with the daffodilsz song Having said that this isn t a badly written book even if it did get a tiny bit melodramatic towards the end and the female characters fell into the misogynistic male male romance evil harpy cliche Dancing With The Daffodils