The Little Shadows are three sisters working as touring vaudeville singers in early 20th century North America. The Avery family, and their mother, are still mourning the death of their father and a little brother, but they must try and earn a living.

This is perhaps the least glamorous theatre story I've ever read. As young girls/women, Aurora, Clover and Bella must be seen to observe proprieties, but this is a world of exploitative and predatory men.

Endicott very effectively creates and conveys a sense of historical setting and the way her main characters might have thought about things, and the dilemmas facing them. The book is rather long, and I felt that the story and character development could have been done as well in a shorter book.

I received a review copy of this book through the Amazon Vine programme.

(Amazon review posted 14.08.12) ( )

I liked reading about the Vaudeville era and about how the bookings and billings went. The novel made me think, too, about building and maintaining relationships in such a transitory industry. I found, though, that the book plodded along and could have been much tighter in terms of plot. Just kind of "meh" for me. ( )

I really enjoyed reading this novel. A very interesting historical fiction about the lives of three vaudeville performers in North America around the time of the First World War. Overall a satisfying read. ( )

****Please note I won this book as a Goodreads Giveaway*******


I feel somewhat bad for only rating this book as okay. I feel guilty that it took me so long to finish reading it, especially after winning it as a giveaway. I thought this book would be more fun than it was, being about the vaudeville era.

The main disappointment was the plodding pace of the book. I put this down after barely a hundred pages to read other things. It dragged on, and didn't really catch my interest until somewhere around page 350. And even then, half my reason for finishing it was for the sake of finishing it not necessarily because I wanted to know what happened.

It was just too somber for my liking. The characters seemed thrown together, just like the jumble of all the different chapters. Which weren't even chapters so much as headers. It reminded me of reading an article in a textbook or something. The format was meant, I think, to resemble the nature of vaudeville and have the approach of vignettes, and a show, but it didn't mesh for me.

I felt that the background was really lacking as well. Especially the parts of the story regarding the girls brother Harry, and their father. They all cared for the brother and father, that was obvious, but there was little explanation in the way of their deaths and I felt that a little more back story would have been helpful.

The whole courtship (or lack thereof?) of Aurora and Mr Ridgeway seemed to be pointless filler. The relationship with their uncle seemed that way too. It served the purpose of helping bind up the end of the story but the way that the past fight is brought up in thought only without any real mention is just useless, it could have been cut out entirely.

There were too many characters and too much crowding of them, for me to get pulled in by the story.

This author is new to me, but sadly after struggling so much to get through this I don't think I'll be trying to read anything else by her. At least not anytime soon. ( )

(Fiction, Literary, Historical, Canadian)

I do love Marina Endicott, who departs from her usual current day settings to tell this story set on the vaudeville circuit of the Canadian prairies and Montana in the years 1912 to 1917. It follows the fortunes of three sisters who form a singing and dancing act.

It’s a thoroughly absorbing story and I thought the ‘placard’ chapter titles were a delightful touch.

This was first recommended to me by the late Kevin from Canada.

4½ stars ( )