The Dance and the Fire

Natalia, Erre and Conejo used to be inseparable for awhile as teenagers. It did not last long but while it lasted it was passionate in a way that only young love can be (or young lust anyway). The friendships survived to different degrees but the fire of the past is not there anymore and had not been there for awhile. Instead, years later when we catch up with them, their home town Cuernavaca is being chocked by a different fire - a literal one this time.

The novel is told in 3 stories - with one of the 3 serving as the narrator. The later stories do not start where the previous one stops - they overlap in time, showing us some of the same events from multiple sides. Natalia stayed home, got settled with an older artist and achieved her show more dream to be a choreographer. Erre went to the big city and found some work as a movie-maker but is now back - unemployed, broken and divorced. Conejo seemingly never changed.

Each of the 3 narrations continues the overall story - Natalia is preparing to exhibit her work in her part of the novel, Erre gets us through some of the days around the day when it happens and Conejo gets us the aftermath. That's the linear part of the novel and as such, the plot is barely kept together. But I don't think that this was the point.

Natalia is obsessed with devil dances and danse macabre so we get treated to a history of weird events through the centuries (a few checks online seem to corroborate all of the facts). Erre's story, which forms the middle of the story, shows us a man falling fast into addiction and depression, with physical pain manifesting almost out of nowhere. And Conejo who seems to be the only one who never achieved anything in his life ends up the voice of reason, closing the story with an explanation of what happened. Within that story, all 3 remember the past (not always in the same way) and their relationships with each other and with their respective families.

The whole atmosphere of the novel is stifling - the wildfires around Cuernavaca are providing the physical part of the feeling and the stories that emerge add the emotional part which gets even more oppressing as some of the sexual relationship are rekindled (not very surprisingly, that does not really happen as everyone expects it to). You expect something sinister to happen and when it does, it ties cleanly into the narrative but remains unresolved. But not unfinished - it is the kind of novel that makes you decide for yourself what really happened.

It is a bizarre novel which left me dissatisfied - I really dislike unexplained phenomenons in my novels (and there is not even a hint of supernatural or some kind of magical realism to account for it - which I was grateful for because it would have been a cop-out). I liked the play between the actual fires and the fires in our narrators' lives and where they all ended but it also felt somewhat overwritten in places. On the other hand I learned a lot about medieval Danse Macabre, dance-related witch trials (well, for some definition of dance), Mary Wigman, Aleister Crowley in his early days and weird dance choreography. Which is always a plus even when I do not enjoy the novel itself that much. show less