Kiss and Tango: Looking for Love in Buenos Aires by Marina Palmer Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.92 You Save: $20.03 (80%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.42 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Kiss and Tango: Looking for Love in Buenos Aires
Book Review: New York to Buenos Aires, Advertising to Tango
Summary: 5 Stars
Sometimes in life you just gotta drop what you're doing and go with the flow. Sometimes you can look around at your well paying job doing what you've wanted to do all your life and just decide to chuck it.
At the magic age of 30, an advertising account executive in New York City, unmarried and with little prospect of ever getting the husband, children and white picket fence it was time for Marina Palmer to bag it and start anew.
But Boy! Chucking over New York and a big time career to take a run at moving to Buenos Aires and becoming a professional tango dancer. That's a change. Of course having Daddy to help out with a couple of thousand dollars a month doesn't hurt either.
In her move to Buenos Aires she also picked up a series of shall we say prospective partners. Some were partners on the dance floor. As for the other partners, Cosmo has listed this as one of the juiciest books around. She certainly describes a liberated life.
Book Review: UN GANCHO, UN ENROQUE & A JAUNT THROUGH BUENOS AIRES
Summary: 4 Stars
What is it about Buenos Aires that attracts the masses? Argentine charm? The Sexy men and women? The temptation of living the lifesytle of a KING or QUEEN?
Or is it just the Tango?
Marina Palmer answers this question by taking us on her rollercoaster 'crash' ride to become a professional Tango dancer and to find a 'partner' in Buenos Aires. Palmer skillfully portrays the subtle naunces of the unattainable Argentine Tango and the underground/inside world that circles it. Palmer breaks free of the weighty tones commonplace to most tango writing uncloaking the mystery, nostagia, violence, sex and loneliness of the Tango in an enchanting and lighthearted account that can be read (and will be read) in only a couple engrossing sittings.
Kiss and Tango is about much more than the Tango. It is an empowerment book sure to inspire anyone feeling unfulfilled in their current life position. Palmer's book provides a fun, witty and courageously honest account of what it takes to transform one's life. Although following your passion down to the depths of South America might not be the best option for all, Palmer makes it all too tempting. Kiss & Tango will make you take that first difficult step out of your routine comfort-zone and into that wonderfully daunting world of new and exotic possibilities.
I suggest reading this book on the flight to BsAs and again on the way back!
Book Review: from an argentinian
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a fun, entertaining and enlightening read for anyone. I was born in Argentina and I learned a lot about tango that I didn't know before. She does a wonderful job of describing Argentine culture, and describing Spanish words and foods in easy to follow terms. Since this is basically an autobiography, it makes the book that much better, because you know its not made up. She experienced all of this. I don't like to read, and I could have read this in 3-4 days (which is record-breaking for me) if I wanted, but I liked it so much that I wanted to delay ending the book so I could enjoy it that much longer. Read it. You won't regret it.Book Review: Very entertaining
Summary: 5 Stars
All Marina Palmer wanted from her two-week vacation in Argentine, visiting her cousin, was a time away from her advertising job in Manhattan. Though highly educated, well paid and living in a nice doorman building, Marina was unhappy and bored. Her job was just one argument after another and her personal life was nil. In fact the only person she did see regularly was her therapist, three times a week.
She didn't know much about Buenos Aires, other than a slight thought of Polo players and some sort of famous dance. But when on the first night there, still suffering from jet lag, she's taken to a Tango dance hall, she's swept away by the music, rhythm and passion of the dance. Before the first week of her vacation was over, after walking the streets and taking in all that the humid city could give her, she found a dance instructor and began to learn how to Tango.
After her vacation and back in New York, Marina found that the passion for the tango followed her home to the frozen canyons of Manhattan. She took more lessons and spent her nights dancing in the various Tango clubs in town. After spending two years living at night and just surviving her days at work, she had an epiphany on her therapist's couch. She'd leave New York and go back to Buenos Aires to become a professional Tango dancer.
With her advertiser's gift of gab she manages to talk her wealthy mother and father into subsidizing her, calling it getting an MBA in dance that will translate into teaching and a good career later on. Off she goes to Argentina and into years filled with heartbreak and happiness, Tangoing from partner to partner.
Marina explains that the Tango is playing with fire, but making sure you don't get burned. It's all pursuit, all foreplay with sexual frustration making the dance vibrate with tension. Completely a liberated modern woman, Marina unfortunately couldn't help but still search for "The One" partner, the man who would make all her hopes and dreams come true, the man who would make her life whole, both on and off the dance floor. But as no man seemed to possess all of her long list of requirements, she's left tangoing from one partner to the next. Some she drops and some drop her, leaving her open to heartache and tears.
For five years Marina lives and dances in Buenos Aires, making friends and contacts with other dancers and absorbing the life in Argentina, but she refuses to let her mind rest on the idea that she was getting too old for the dance without a partner and that making a living dancing was getting to be impossible. Only when the political unrest in Argentina finally erupts in front of her small apartment building does she have thoughts of leaving, even though her latest dance gig is on the street, doing the tango for donations in a hat.
Written in the form of a diary, Marina manages to convey one woman's experiences in vivid and sometime humorous and emotional terms. The readers learn a lot about her life as she haunts the cafes, shops and streets of Argentina, and we learn a lot about the delicious treats to be found therein, but I would have enjoyed hearing more about the dancer's physical workout and about the technical terms and the art of the Tango. One chapter does have a marvelous description of what Marina was aiming for as she danced, where and why she placed her hands, arms and legs and her artistic aim, and it left me wanting much more of the same. Most of the time she only describes her dancing as closing her eyes and drifting off.
KISS AND TANGO is a wonderful book for lovers of travel, modern romance and the dance. It's in turns humorous and poignant and makes for a terrific read.
Book Review: An inspiring read!
Summary: 5 Stars
Sometimes it is hard to see the forest for the trees. Staring at these trees in the harsh morning light of your office cubicle, you might wonder if you can escape. You might wonder if you can follow your passion; take apart all the jigsaw pieces of your life and put them back together so they look better to you. Is that possible?
"Kiss and Tango" yells YES at the top of its lungs and provides one glowing example in the form of author Marina Palmer!
Readers will be enchanted by her descriptions of long, hot nights dancing tango in Buenos Aires as she pursued a professional career. But they will be heartened, and will remember, that she arrived there by taking a risk: quitting her job as an advertising executive in New York and moving to Argentina.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in tango, Argentina or the relative merits of various fishnet stockings. I highly recommend it to anyone who believes in our innate power to change our own lives, but who maybe needs a little reminder.