Mixing equal parts personal-growth story, social commentary and Tango 101, Finn demystifies the illustrious world of tango...
A gracefully rendered memoir of a woman seeking post-divorce healing through tango.
The tango first evolved in late-19th-century Argentina, spreading to clubs in Europe and the United States in the years leading up to World War I. Known for its fiery drama and stylistic flair, the complexity and emotive breadth of authentic tango has been diluted by simplistic Hollywood numbers and, more recently, TV dance competitions. Finn (editor: Mexico in Mind, 2006, etc.) conveys an abiding veneration for tango, from its rich historical origins and romantic vocabulary to the nuanced precision in gestures and footwork. With chapters named for the structural elements of tango—El Abrazo, La Sacada, El Boleo, etc.—the author bluntly recounts the unraveling of her marriage, along with the machinations of dating, elegantly drawing metaphorical lines between challenging dance maneuvers and the phases of relationships. “These fixed patterns,” writes the author, “set to melodies and harmonies, give order in the chaos of emotions. Patterns are what we follow to find the source, and in tango, the source is why a person chooses this dance.” Other tango-based journals, such as Marina Palmer’s Kiss and Tango: Looking for Love in Buenos Aires (2005), are more provocative; Finn’s narrative remains rooted in inner growth and sociological observation than stockings and stilettos. Despite refreshingly candid analyses of her choices and a vivid cast of friends and dance partners, the author’s sardonic wit is sometimes eclipsed by cumbersome reiterations of the finer technical points of tango. Nonetheless, from the public tango milongas in New York to her immersion in the Buenos Aires tango community after the 2001 economic crisis spawned a renewed interest in the dance, her devotion to the art is obvious.
Mixing equal parts personal-growth story, social commentary and Tango 101, Finn demystifies the illustrious world of tango with wry yet reverent insight.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-56512-517-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2009
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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