The Tango Singer is a wonderfully resonant tour of Buenos Aires, its labyrinthine streets and twin histories: the political and the literary. Our narrator is Bruno Cadogan, a PhD student who travels to the city to research his thesis - a study of Jorge Luis Borges' essays on the origins of the tango - and instead finds himself mesmerised by the recent legend of a tango singer, the near-mythical Julio Martel. Rumoured to have an incomparably beautiful voice which has never been recorded, he performs at random, unannounced, on obscure street corners, and Bruno's mounting obsession with hearing Martel sing leads him on a disordered, dreamlike journey around the city. His narrative spins into the stories he hears from the people he meets, often running into one another with no distinction of voices, so that Bruno's 'I' becomes the 'I' of Buenos Aires itself. Martínez draws heavily on Borges' work: direct references to the writer and allusions, usually pertaining to the maze-like nature of the Argentine capital, pepper the narrative. The Borges short story 'The Aleph' forms the basis of one of Bruno's main obsessions, as he and a friend/lover known only as 'El Tucumano' conspire to gain access to the basement of their boarding-house to entice tourists to its supposed location. In Borges' story, the aleph appears as 'a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance' through which everything, all the universe, infinity, can be glimpsed. At first, this is just a ploy to make money; later, Bruno becomes convinced the aleph truly exists. This is just one example of the way the story spirals into an almost hallucinatory state, with the structure of the novel reflecting both the topography of Buenos Aires and its protagonist's disorientation.If you enjoy the sort of book that really transports you to another place, I'd recommend this: more than anything else, it's a portrait of a character falling in love with a city. Martínez has a style that's lucid in every sense of the word, and the book is somehow full of texture, coming alive with the heat and the music of its setting.
Was bogged down for weeks trying to get through this thing.Possibly it was a terrible translation. Entire pages would have sentences that began with "I." Possibly in Spanish, with "Yo" left out, this would be bearable. As it is, the narrator comes across as extremely egocentric. He really thinks he can write his thesis on a Borges story set in Buenos Aires without seizing the opportunity to actually go there? Mostly I stuck with the book for the descriptions of B.A. and the bits about the tango singer. I wish the narrator could have been eliminated and we could have just had the story of the tango singer. He's a mysterious character with a fascinating life, so why not tell us all of it? Much more interesting than wandering around with our narrator. If I had read more Borges, perhaps those illusions in the book would have seemed more meaningful. The narrator's rather caustic capitalistic involvement with the aleph was not enjoyable or illuminating. A crying shame. This book even had a great cover---cool detail map of streets in B.A.The tango singer's story in the hands of Louis de Bernieres or Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Isabel Allende---they would do something magnificent. An epic tale of the tragedy of 20th century B.A., from the uniquely personal to the broadly political and back again.
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Leído como anillo en Bookcrossing:////////////////////////////////////////DI-VI-NODISFRUTABLE 100%Un paseo por la ciudad de Buenos Aires desde el relato, y buscando por esos rincones, dónde me he dejado mi aleph... acaso lo he perdido?? acaso alguna vez lo tuve??? me pareció que podía conocer la ciudad de la mano del pobre muchacho y sus peripecias.Este es de esos libros que siempre vas a recordar, porque miran tu ciudad desde otras perspectivas, acaso mágicas, y gracias a que trajino diariamente tanto por toda la Capital, me he hallado hurgando esos rincones desde mi ventanilla.Gracias infinitas, un lujo haber tenido este ejemplar conmigo!!!Pasará a manos de su siguiente lectora.
—Faedyl
I really wanted to like this book: it received outstanding reviews; the author is well-respected; and, the subject matter is off-beat and somewhat exotic.After 100 pages, I decided it wasn't for me. As other reviewer's mentioned, the pace is somewhat slow; I expected that to be a parallel to the tango, or the Argentinian culture, and kept waiting for the pace to quicken and the story to heat up. Either I didn't give it enough time, or it just wasn't going to happen, but I was not drawn in to the "magic." Ordinarily, I don't mind a book where nothing occurs, but this one created expectations that were not met for me.
—Nancy
Tomás Eloy Martínez no es de mis autores favoritos, creo que me falta "argentinidad" para disfrutarlo en su totalidad.En esta novela, lo que más me llamó la atención fue la descripción de la ciudad de Buenos Aires en plena crisis, una ciudad con mucho pasado pero un futuro incierto (hasta el día de hoy), BAires en plena crisis, tratando de rescatar su dignidad e inmensidad.No puedo dejar de pensar que es un muy personal pase de cuentas, y tributo, del autor a la ciudad y el Tango, así con mayúscula.
—Susana
