Book excerpt: Dance Class offers an extraordinary collection of student essays about Anthony Powells great comic novel A Dance to the Music of Time. The young authors not only discuss issues of character, plot, and theme, but they also investigate historical background, chart personal relevance, parody characters and situations, even in one students case write a treatment for a drama. In examining Mrs. Erdleighs fortune-telling mumbo-jumbo, Cassidy Carpenter presents compelling and original evidence that the narrators birthday is the same as Powells. Will Story provides an invaluable guide to all the military acronyms that percolate through the war novels. Alex Svec creates a brilliant parody of writings by Julian Maclaren-Ross, the real-life model for X. Trapnel. For those who love A Dance to the Music of Time, this book will reveal fresh new ways of looking at the series. And for those who are just discovering it, Dance Class will prove a useful and highly entertaining guide.