The Tango Singer, by Tomas Eloy Martinez.

I enjoyed this slim volume – mostly, I think, because Kirsten and I vacationed in Buenos Aires, Argentina in Feb. of this year. The book follows NYU grad student Bruno Cadigan as he goes to Buenos Aires to work on his thesis. He is trying to find the elusive Tango Singer, Julio Martel, rumored to have one of the greatest voices in Argentina.

He’s helped in his quest by “el Tucomano” – someone he meets at the airport. This thread is what holds the novel together; it is basically a number of vignettes about Buenos Aires’ past and present. Bruno arrives at the end of 2001, as Argentina’s economy takes a nosedive. A lot of the historical vignettes are “as told to” Bruno by Martel’s female companion, Alcira.

What really held my interest, however, were the stories and descriptions of various places in Buenos Aires that we actually visited. It was like being there again. Even though the images the author invokes are very detailed, they became even more vivid since I didn’t have to imagine them.