Here At the End of the World We Learn to Dance (thoughts)

First off, I’m doing an experiment today. You know all those articles saying being online so much has shortened our attention spans? Well, I think Twitter has shortened mine. Usually, if I’m at home I have Twitter open, even when I’m reading, and I’ll stop reading in order to tweet something. I also have my e-mail open compulsively and have to read every new e-mail that I get right away. Of course, I can leave the computer when I cook, or do chores, or am out of the house, so it seems odd to me that I can’t leave it alone when I’m reading! Anyway, the upshot is that I’m not going to get on Twitter at all today (my first impulse was to tweet that! lol), and I’m only allowed to check my e-mail every four hours. I want to see how it affects my reading. :) And, I think I need to be on the computer less and less in order to prepare for Dewey’s Read-a-Thon on Saturday, during which I’ll be attached to it quite a bit! (And which I’m so excited about!)

Now on to the book! For Maree’s spur-of-the-moment New Zealand Challenge this month, I wanted to read a book by a white New Zealander, since I had already read a (wonderful) book by a Maori author this year (Whale Rider-go read it if you haven’t already!). I’d heard of Lloyd Jones thanks to Mister Pip, which has been quite popular among bloggers, but that one didn’t appeal to me (I could take for ages about my dislike of Great Expectations). Then I discovered he’d written another book: Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance, which centered around tango and tragic love, and that was partly set in Argentina. Perfect!

 When I started reading it, I discovered there were nested stories, one of which was set during World War I and the following years, the other of which was set three generations later. I love nested stories! :) Jones handled them really well too: he wasn’t constantly flipping back and forth to artificially tease the reader-there was enough of each story at a time to really grab on to, and while they touched on one another (the WWI bit is being told by a main characters’ granddaughter to her employee), they didn’t mirror each other. Neither plot was anything new, though; both deal with first loves, with impossible loves really, with growing up, and with figuring out what your values are.

There are several interesting characters. Lionel is a university student from the country, new to a big city and working as a dishwasher for extra money, who begins taking tango lessons and growing up. Rosa is a restaurant owner, originally from Argentina, whose family moved to Sydney when she was a girl, and now seems a bit adrift in New Zealand. Mr. Schmidt is an English piano tuner who arrives in a small town in New Zealand after they’ve lost most of their sons to the war, and is forced to go into hiding because of his name. Louise is a young girl wondering if there’s anything more to life who helps Schmidt. Then there are the little characters: the Quakers who refuse to go to war since they believe in pacifism, Lionel’s family who are worried he’s growing too far away from his roots, and a few more I can’t mention without giving away some later plot points. ;) These characters all have an archetypal feel to them, but Jones also makes them individual.

The heart of the story is the a love of dance, specifically the tango. The characters who learn it seem transformed by it, and Jones describes the dance in loving, vivid terms that put me right there next to them! It’s like another character, really.

So, even though the plot and characters aren’t wildly inventive, and the prose isn’t fancy, Jones is a born storyteller, and I truly cared about the various lives he intertwines and enjoyed my time spent with this novel. I’d recommend it to most people-it’s a slim story that speaks to the universal dilemmas that face us all. I definitely want to read more by Jones-I’m eyeing his travelogue about Albania, Biografi, next. Thanks to Maree for reminding us that October is New Zealand books month and urging me to pick up a Kiwi author!

Have you read any books by New Zealanders? Did you enjoy them? This book also whetted by appetite for fiction set in Argentina, so if you have any suggestions, please throw them my way!