The Gods of Tango
A novel
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
February 1913: seventeen-year-old Leda, clutching a suitcase and her father’s cherished violin, leaves her small Italian village for a new home (and husband) halfway across the world in Argentina. Upon her arrival in Buenos Aires, Leda is shocked to find that her bridegroom has been killed. Unable to fathom the idea of returning home, she remains in this unfamiliar city, living in a commune, without friends or family, on the brink of destitution. She finally acts on a passion she has kept secret for years: mastering the violin. Leda is seduced by the music that underscores life in the city: tango, born from lower-class immigrant voices, now the illicit, scandalous dance of brothels and cabarets. Leda knows, however, that she can never play in public as a woman, so she cuts off her hair, binds her breasts, and, as a young man, joins a troupe of musicians bent on bringing tango into the salons of high society. As time progresses, the lines between Leda and her disguise will begin to blur, and feelings that she has long kept suppressed will reveal themselves, jeopardizing not only her music career but her life itself.
With evocative scenery, prose suffused with the rhythms of the tango, and a deep, resonant core, De Robertis delivers her most accomplished novel yet.
This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
De Robertis's beautifully written third novel (after Perla and The Invisible Mountain) follows the trajectory of Italian immigrant Leda Mazzoni, who lives as a man in order to support herself in Argentina circa 1913. The story opens as Leda leaves the small Italian village of Alazzano to make a new life in Buenos Aires with her cousin Dante, to whom she is promised in marriage. When she arrives and finds that Dante has been killed, Leda resolves to make her new life work but is disheartened when she realizes that prostitution is the only avenue open to unmarried women without means. So she decides to don her dead husband's clothes and take his name, finding a job at a cigarette factory and playing tangos on her heirloom violin at night. Leda, posing as Dante, catches the ear of a fairly successful band leader, who recruits her for his group. As the author chronicles Leda's transformation, the book sometimes switches to the perspective of a minor character, making for a richer but still-cohesive narrative that describes the lives of a working-class Argentineans. The entire novel makes for a poetic read, with De Robertis penning effortlessly lyrical sentences. The novel is true to its time and manages to be engrossing and believable, though it weakens after Leda's secret is discovered. A clunky third act almost derails an otherwise strong story, but De Robertis's wonderful prose manages to save it.
