Read this series in JR High and simply LOVED them! I need to track these down.....

I do think this series finished too quickly. I think I'd have preferred Drina to be at least 20 - 21 before she got the ballerina title, and also before she got married. I thought the whole Rose storyline was weak... suddenly Rose was jealous but she had never been before? Seriously? However because I love this series and it was a conclusion - and a happy conclusion at that, I'm still happy to leave it at the five stars it was when I read it as a much younger girl :)

I had not read the Drina books since I was a child and I recently re-read them all. I read the first 5 as a child and then as a teen I hunted down the final 6 once I realized they existed. I am happy to say that for the most part they hold up to the test of time. They are very much in the style of British school stories but I quite like those. I think the whole series is definitely worth the effort it takes to hunt them down.

My grandmother bought this book for me when I was 8 or 9 and I remember reading it in the car journey back home and loving it.

Over the years I have managed to acquire the rest of the series and this is one of the best books which ends it.

Drina is now dancing with the Dominick company full time and starts the book by going to see her friend Jenny who has just had a baby. Estoril quickly gets us up to speed with what has happened in the 9 months since the previous book ended and we find Drina is struggling to decide if she should marry or wait until she has had her first star role.

A lot happens in this book and Drina is certainly an adult by the end of it. I noticed details I had missed which is why I love re-reading books. An excellent finale to an excellent series.

see review of book #1

I'm embarrassed to say that I finally got this book and read it this week. I thoroughly enjoyed the finale to a series that I started as a kid and never finished (11 books, 5 published in the US). It gives me some closure!

The last book is interesting and sufficiently bittersweet to be somewhat realistic. Drina is described as "ruthless" as she climbs the ranks of her ballet company and has lost a connection with may of her close friends. She's okay with that though and marries and American businessman at the end(this is the early 60s, I think). I found the descriptions of NY and air travel from that era to be revealing. There is such of sense of optimism that pervades through this book--I wonder if this is the case of many children’s books from the late 50s and early 60s...

I give the series five stars, but this book only three. I've been waiting 20 years to read this book, and finally, I tracked it down (and was actually able to afford it) but it did not live up to 20 years worth of expectation. In all fairness, probably not much would. It's obvious that this book was written many years after the tenth book, Drina Goes on Tour. The writing style is different, it's stilted, and it's hard to determine which decade it's set in.
Whatever flaws with the writing and characters not being true to their past selves (Angry! Rose, just why???) I'm still so glad that I finally read it. The drina series epitomized my junior high life, I read and re-read books 1-10 countless times (books 6-10 the prized souvenirs of a trip to London in fifth grade, since they were never released in the US.) Drina not only fostered a life long love of the ballet, but she taught me that the most important thing in life is to follow your dream. I wish all young girls would read this series. Even though they were written in the 1960's, the writing and characters surprisingly hold up.
This 11th book might not have been to the same caliber of the first 10, but I will never regret reading it. I sobbed like a child when I finished it (much to my husbands delight, I'll never live this down) just because the series was over and even though I'm 30+ years old, it feels like with Drina's marriage and success, both of our childhoods were finally officially over too. Thank you, Drina, for being part of my life for the last 22 years. I'll never forget you!

Finally able to read all 11 in the series!

Like so many others here, I was thrilled to find and read this book many, many years after I had discovered and loved Drina as a child. As several reviewers have already said, there is a compelling, utterly charming quality about the character and the books that has endured down the years. I was given Drina Goes on Tour by an older cousin and reread it often between the age of 10 and 14 (by which time it was my first comfort read).

What made Drina Goes on Tour, apart from the determination to succeed despite setbacks, was the beautifully evoked yearning for Grant Rossiter throughout this book. As a 13-year-old that really spoke to me! For decades I sometimes wondered what had happened after the final pages. To find this final installment in the Drina series was a joy and I read it with pure nostagia and guilty pleasure.

I fervently wish I could say otherwise, but it fell flat for me. Perhaps there was just too much expectation, too much investment from my younger self, too much personal imagination. Surely Estoril owed it to her readers, many of whom would have been in their 30s and 40s when it was first published in 1991, at least to give a glimpse of how the real love affair (as opposed to the one in Drina’s mind) had begun and developed? I realise this is a children’s book, but would a simple reference to a kiss and Drina’s mental reaction have been out of the question?

As for the proposal scene, it was heartbreakingly disappointing. Utterly bloodless even for a children’s book, especially when the author had built up the relationship so poignantly over the preceding books. (I recently acquired Drina Dances in New York because I wondered how Estoril had handled the first meeting with Grant, and found it was done enchantingly.)

Perhaps this book is just too obviously a late addition written by a much older woman. There are some strange half-hearted updates - I think I remember a computer being mentioned (someone correct me if i’m wrong) - in real life, thirty years had passed since Drina was in New York.

The wrap-up of the other plot strands was satisfying, though obvious. I liked the cautious friendship between Drina and Queenie, and some nice put-down moments with Igor Jnr. I wish Rose’s story had been more in character, and that aspect portrayed more subtly and with more exploration of it in conversation with Drina. Have to say, I have loved reading the other reviews and reactions to this book and series which have rather magically stayed with us down the years.

This review is for the series as a whole. The first five volumes get 5 stars, but everything after gets 3 stars.

I read the first five volumes of this series as a kid and loved them, and then was surprised to discover as an adult that there were several more! Of course I read them.

I understand why only the first 5 were republished--they were beautifully written and then ended in Book 5 with the reveal of Drina's secret. But there is a clear break between those volumes and what came after. The writer seemed to lose her way after #5 since the main tension in the series was gone. The books became more like a travel log as Drina visits various places in Europe. However, these travel descriptions are like a time capsule since they were written in the 1950's and 60's and are interesting in themselves for that, and still written so well. Unfortunately, Drina also becomes rather unlikeable after Book 5 in that she becomes rather snobbish and hard-hearted. The author is also unkind to several main characters in the later books, including Drina's closest friends, Jenny and Rose, and Drina's grandmother who is called "conventional" several times in a rather sneering tone. The tension with Igor Dominick Jr was. never explored or exploited and so everything after #5 just fell kind of flat, especially since she chooses to link herself to Mr. Conventional himself, Grant Rossiter. The time capsule effect continues with how young women were expected to marry and behave after they were married.

The final volume was a disappointment. The author just seemed so bored and skipped right over the most important moments or possibilities and focused on inanities. Was she tired of the series? Was it even the same author? I don't know anything about ballet, but I have an urge to rewrite the last 6 volumes.

It’s a funny series, this one. Charming in its way - unfinished, too, since only the first five books were published in the US - and a weird mix of hard work and ridiculous good luck.

That mix is best done in the third book, I think, which is not coincidentally the book where Drina actively tries to live a wider life. That changes in the later books, when her chief defining characteristic is that she must dance, more than anything.

It’s that note that makes this book more than wish-fulfillment vapidity. She gets married, yes, to someone rich, and she’s in the midst of tremendous professional success - at eighteen. But you get the sense that her entire life will be defined by her art and her single-mindedness, no matter how that affects her relationships, and there’s almost the sense that maybe that’s not a good thing. That her life might seem perfect now, but that it may become difficult. And it’s not only the artistic-temperament perspective. It’s an interesting touch.

There are also the difficult parts of the book - poverty, loneliness, professional jealousy, ego. They’re on the periphery, but they’re there, and they make the series much more than the simple story it easily might have been.

I don’t know that this is good, necessarily (though I loved the first five books as a twelve-year-old). There are off notes: the timeline is too compressed, and some characters are unrecognizable. But this does have something more to say than “the road to success is paved with roses,” and I appreciate that.

This review was written for The Review Diaries: http://reviewdiaries.blogspot.com/201...

The last month has been filled for me with moving house, and that meant unpacking a lot of books I haven’t touched since I was a child. The ‘Drina’ books were a favourite of mine growing up – in fact they were a favourite of my mother as well, as they were first published in 1957.

The series consists of eleven books, detailing the life and adventures of Drina Adams from age ten (roughly) to age eighteen. Drina, brought up by her grandparents – soft and gentle grandfather and strict and over bearing granny – after her parents were killed when she was only 18 months old. Drina is desperate to be a ballet dancer, but her granny is determined that she have nothing to do with the world. However Drina does eventually win, and we learn more about her past, her legacy, her legendary ballet dancer mother, and her travels around the world – as well as her learning to be a ballet dancer – throughout the series.

The series has aged remarkably well – particularly considering I’m reading them over half a century since the first books graced the shelves. Yes there are subtle differences – no mobiles, no computers, there are still corridors and compartments in trains and telegrams. But these are so well blended that it doesn’t seem jarring.

Yes there are turns of phrase that are awkward, and the editing is a bit naff in some of the books, but overall they are a lovely series – one that translates well from child to adult.

Drina is – whilst at times a little too highly strong – a mostly lovely character. I felt for her, and ached for her, and raced through the pages to see what would happen to the charming heroine next.

The secondary characters sometimes fall into stereotypes, but they’re so vividly created and delightful to get to know – apart from the nasty ones which
I want to throw things out – that it really didn’t bother me. And Drina seems to have no problem making friends, which lead to a vast cast of well-crafted individuals with compelling backstories – Jenny and her tragic time growing up, the refugee Ilonka, born and bred Londoner Rose. Oh and not forgetting the boys – flamboyant Paris born Igor Dominick the younger, and the fabulously dreamy Grant Rossiter…

After reading them again, I think I’ve discovered where I got my early yearning to travel, because almost every country Drina visits is one on my list of places I’m desperate to visit. Wales, Switzerland, the Chilterns, Italy, Edinburgh, New York, Paris, Madeira… And every single one of them exquisitely and vividly described.

And the romance… It’s subtle, and completely different from anything we experience in modern novels. There is no epic first kiss, and for the most part it is a long distance yearning, but it’s beautiful and it’s painful and it’s exquisite when they’re together.

And whilst Drina’s life seems at times a little charmed, there are hardships in there, it isn’t all beautiful awesome, and her journey is by no means an easy road, and I think that gives the series such a good believable grounding to branch off into fiction from.

The ballet is not all consuming, but plays a very great part, and completely takes over whilst your reading. I always find myself yearning to travel and take up ballet whilst reading the books – which I always take as a good sign if it makes me long to do something I wouldn’t normally do.

My only complaint was how quickly Drina falls in love, and sometimes how harsh and over bearing her Grandmother can be.

Whilst there are always favourite books in a series, overall it creates a very beautiful telling of an extraordinary child’s early life.