THE TANGO SINGER

Name: THE TANGO SINGER
Author: Tomás Eloy Martínez
ISBN: 1-58234-601-1

by Tomás Eloy Martínez & translated by Anne McLean ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 16, 2006

Worlds better than Martínez’s banal Perón-inflected novels—and reason enough to understand why some readers consider him one...

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Argentina’s flamboyant culture and troubled history are explored from an unusual perspective in this third translated novel from the Argentine-born (now U.S. resident) author of The Perón Novel and Santa Evita.

It recounts the scholarly adventure (and intellectual awakening) of American Ph.D. candidate Bruno Cadogan, a Borges scholar who travels in 2001 to Buenos Aires to research both his dissertation topic (the treatment of the eponymous dance’s history in Borges’s essays) and a subject suggested to him during a brief meeting with the cultural historian Jean Franco: legendary “tango singer” Julio Martel. Thus, with convenient if somewhat arch irony, Bruno arrives in Buenos Aires, and finds lodgings at the boarding house famous for being the supposed inspiration for Borges’s great, maddeningly coy and enigmatic short story “The Aleph.” That story imagines the existence of a theoretical “point” at which all other potential points converge. And, as it happens, the elusive Martel’s artistry runs a somewhat parallel course. Chronically ill and perhaps near death, the tango singer performs only free concerts, unannounced except by “underground” word of mouth, in abandoned buildings, warehouses and slums throughout his city. His songs are patchwork distillations of Argentina’s history, epic laments that chronicle the experiences of immigration and exile and, more generally, a long, sorrowful reiteration of cultural, ethnic and political conflict. This is an ingenious concept, and Martínez handles it quite cleverly, doling out information in quick little bursts of introspection, surmise and narrative. But this structure betrays him into overloading the novel with discursive commentary—and the result is that the central story of Bruno’s seekings and findings ultimately becomes neither convincing nor especially interesting. And yet, the image of the tango singer as his country’s moribund yet stoical conscience is hard to forget.

Worlds better than Martínez’s banal Perón-inflected novels—and reason enough to understand why some readers consider him one of Latin America’s major literary exports.

Pub Date: May 16, 2006

ISBN: 1-58234-601-1

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
PURGATORY
by Tomás Eloy Martínez & translated by Frank Wynne

- BOOK REVIEW
SANTA EVITA
by Tomás Eloy Martínez

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NEVER LET ME GO

by Kazuo Ishiguro ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 11, 2005

A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy.

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An ambitious scientific experiment wreaks horrendous toll in the Booker-winning British author’s disturbingly eloquent sixth novel (after When We Were Orphans, 2000).

Ishiguro’s narrator, identified only as Kath(y) H., speaks to us as a 31-year-old social worker of sorts, who’s completing her tenure as a “carer,” prior to becoming herself one of the “donors” whom she visits at various “recovery centers.” The setting is “England, late 1990s”—more than two decades after Kath was raised at a rural private school (Hailsham) whose students, all children of unspecified parentage, were sheltered, encouraged to develop their intellectual and especially artistic capabilities, and groomed to become donors. Visions of Brave New World and 1984 arise as Kath recalls in gradually and increasingly harrowing detail her friendships with fellow students Ruth and Tommy (the latter a sweet, though distractible boy prone to irrational temper tantrums), their “graduation” from Hailsham and years of comparative independence at a remote halfway house (the Cottages), the painful outcome of Ruth’s breakup with Tommy (whom Kath also loves), and the discovery the adult Kath and Tommy make when (while seeking a “deferral” from carer or donor status) they seek out Hailsham’s chastened “guardians” and receive confirmation of the limits long since placed on them. With perfect pacing and infinite subtlety, Ishiguro reveals exactly as much as we need to know about how efforts to regulate the future through genetic engineering create, control, then emotionlessly destroy very real, very human lives—without ever showing us the faces of the culpable, who have “tried to convince themselves. . . . That you were less than human, so it didn’t matter.” That this stunningly brilliant fiction echoes Caryl Churchill’s superb play A Number and Margaret Atwood’s celebrated dystopian novels in no way diminishes its originality and power.

A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy.

Pub Date: April 11, 2005

ISBN: 1-4000-4339-5

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE SUMMER WE CROSSED EUROPE IN THE RAIN
by Kazuo Ishiguro ; illustrated by Bianca Bagnarelli

- BOOK REVIEW
KLARA AND THE SUN
by Kazuo Ishiguro

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BURIED GIANT
by Kazuo Ishiguro

- BOOK TO SCREEN
‘Never Let Me Go’ Series in the Works at FX

- AWARDS
Shortlists for TikTok Book Awards Are Revealed

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ABSOLUTE POWER

by David Baldacci ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 18, 1996

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The mother of all presidential cover-ups is the centerpiece gimmick in this far-fetched thriller from first-novelist Baldacci, a Washington-based attorney. In the dead of night, while burgling an exurban Virginia mansion, career criminal Luther Whitney is forced to conceal himself in a walk-in closet when Christine Sullivan, the lady of the house, arrives in the bedroom he's ransacking with none other than Alan Richmond, President of the US. Through the one-way mirror, Luther watches the drunken couple engage in a bout of rough sex that gets out of hand, ending only when two Secret Service men respond to the Chief Executive's cries of distress and gun down the letter-opener-wielding Christy. Gloria Russell, Richmond's vaultingly ambitious chief of staff, orders the scene rigged to look like a break-in and departs with the still befuddled President, leaving Christy's corpse to be discovered at another time. Luther makes tracks as well, though not before being spotted on the run by agents from the bodyguard detail. Aware that he's shortened his life expectancy, Luther retains trusted friend Jack Graham, a former public defender, but doesn't tell him the whole story. When Luther's slain before he can be arraigned for Christy's murder, Jack concludes he's the designated fall guy in a major scandal. Meanwhile, little Gloria (together with two Secret Service shooters) hopes to erase all tracks that might lead to the White House. But the late Luther seems to have outsmarted her in advance with recurrent demands for hush money. The body count rises as Gloria's attack dogs and Jack search for the evidence cunning Luther's left to incriminate not only a venal Alan Richmond but his homicidal deputies. The not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper climax provides an unsurprising answer to the question of whether a US president can get away with murder. For all its arresting premise, an overblown and tedious tale of capital sins. (Film rights to Castle Rock; Book-of-the-Month selection)