Carolina De Robertis

My blog is called History and Books and Dance and Stuff so a historical fiction book about tango ticks pretty well all the boxes. And The Gods of Tango has quite a lot of Stuff too. In fact it’s a vast, sprawling work about tango and Buenos Aires and Italy and sexuality and those old tango perennials, love and death.

I can’t begin to discuss the plot, partly because there are twists and turns and I don’t want to spoil it for you and partly because the 384 packed pages defy show more synopsification. (Is that a word? It should be.)

What you need to know is that the story starts in 1913 with Leda arriving in Buenos Aires, leaving a narrow life in a village just outside Naples in search of opportunity in the New World. In the first of many shocks in the book, all her plans are thrown into disarray before she has even left the boat and she finds herself struggling to survive in a city that seems to teeter forever on the edge of madness.

It’s a story packed with characters, all so perfectly drawn that you never get lost, but one of the biggest, most important, characters is Buenos Aires itself and particularly San Telmo, a part of the city I feel particularly at home in. The danger, excitement and opportunity of the city is perfectly captured. It is overcrowded and filthy (even more so in 1913 than now). Yet, as today, it holds you. Leda knows that Buenos Aires destroys its children, yet she cannot bring herself to leave. A peaceful life in a small Italian village is no longer something she can settle for.

Leda falls in love with tango. The music, she thinks, can save her. And it does, though it means she must sacrifice everything. (No spoilers, but ‘everything’ isn’t too much of a stretch here.) She carves out a life in the violent world of tango. She is there as tango moves from the bars and the brothels to the dance halls and eventually the grand clubs and cabarets, even achieving an international respectability. But for Leda, it is always about the music of the people, starting with the rhythms brought from Africa with slavery. (The Gods of Tango is unusual in featuring a black bandoneon player whose grandfather was probably a slave. Argentina used to have a substantial black population but no one talks about that now.)

If you are interested in the history of tango (you’ve probably realised I am), then The Gods of Tango is worth reading just for its description of how and why the music developed through the Golden Age. But the book is much, much more than that. I’ve never read a book by a woman which understands so well the reality of being a man. And when she deals with different aspects of sexuality, she writes better than anyone else I have read, or ever expect to read.

De Robertis has won prizes and fellowships and is definitely a ‘literary author’, a label I am generally suspicious of. But this is someone who has earned their reputation through extraordinary hard work as well as an exceptional ability to write. Leda’s life in Italy was researched in Italy. De Robertis reached Italian emigration to Argentina and Afro-Argentinian history (an area which, as I’ve mentioned, is generally overlooked). She studied the violin as well as tango history and learned to dance. She has explored Buenos Aires today and developed a deep understanding of its history. And she writes fantastic prose. (I just said that, but I’m saying it again.)

I’m getting carried away. All I can say is that this is an astonishing book.

Read it. show less

This is a tough political novel – just the kind I need to avoid right now. But, from the beginning a journalist is interviewing the never-identified Jose Mujica of Uruguay, known as the world's poorest president. The reader therefore knows that Mujica survived imprisonment and torture, and unexpectedly, rose to the presidency.

This foreknowledge, as well as the conversations with the cynical frog, lighten the mood as Mujica reflects on his experiences. The humor made it possible for me to show more read his experiences and know that, he not only endured, he became a singular leader because of them.

I knew nothing about the history of Uruguay. Now I won’t forget this story.

I found this well-written, entertaining and thought-provoking. show less

You know the kind of book where you forget that you're reading words on a page and all of a sudden it's much later than you'd wanted to stay up? This is that kind of novel. Set in Uruguay during the civic-military regime during the seventies and eighties, when Uruguayans lived under constant surveillance and danger of arrest, the novel follows a group of queer women who find a haven of sorts in an isolated beach community. For a few days or a week at a time, they can live authentically, show more although always careful of the people around them.

De Robertis takes her time, revealing the women's histories slowly, as the years go by, as well as taking the women forward as they age. It's a bit of a balancing act, illuminating recent Uruguayan history to readers who know very little about that small South American country, while not boring those who might know more, and while keeping the focus on the five women at the center of the story.

At times dramatic, at times understated, I found this novel to be one that fully captured my attention. I'm looking forward to De Robertis's next novel. show less

A very accomplished work - not a novel to be read, but rather a prose poem to be devoured - certainly not an easy read for the torture and pain described in poetic detail were shattering - yet the beauty and heroic strength of the main character kept the story from being impossible to get through - a story of history and murder and torture yet also of awakening and courage to face the truth and love -

This is a story to remember and one that sheds light on a terrifically dark time in show more Argentina's history - I loved De Robertis' other book, the Invisible Mountain, and found this to be a worthy successor - show less