Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance

July 14, 2008
Jones (Mr. Pip
) crafts a vivid tale of love and the redemption of dance. Argentinean piano tuner Paul Schmidt arrives in New Zealand near the end of WWI. He meets Louise Cunningham, who hides him when ruffians decide to kill Schmidt because his name sounds German. In their makeshift camp, Schmidt teaches Louise the tango. After Paul returns to Buenos Aires, he receives a letter from Louise, who admits she fell in love during their first dance. The pair keep their love alive through letters, even when they are oceans apart and eventually marry other people. The letters later provide clues for Paul's granddaughter, Rosa, who moves to New Zealand and is curious about Paul's mysterious past. Lionel, a university student and dishwasher in Rosa's restaurant, traces Paul and Louise's story, seeing parallels to his own ill-fated love for the older (and married) Rosa. Just as Paul taught Louise, Rosa teaches Lionel how to tango. With his elegant language, Jones moves gracefully between the two stories and time periods, capturing the sensuous interplay between partners in dance and in life.

November 15, 2008
Kiriyama Prize and American Library Association award winner Jones ("Mister Pip") uses the sensuous tango to link generations in this inventive novel, first published in 2002 in New Zealand. In 1915 New Zealand, young Louise helps two Quakers escape war service by hiding them in a cave. A piano tuner named Schmidt, suspected of being German, joins them. To pass the time, Schmidt teaches Louise the tango. Years later in Buenos Aires, Louise becomes Schmidt's shop assistant in his music businessand his mistress. The parallel story belongs to Rosa, Schmidt's granddaughter, who owns a restaurant in Wellington that features Argentine music. She entices Lionel, a dishwasher, to learn the tango. During these after-hours interludes, she talks about the great love story of her grandfather and Louise. Rosa takes Lionel to the cave hideout, where they dance the tango and become lovers in the same place Schmidt and Louise began their affair. Lionel returns to his parents' ranch, ending his affair with Rosa, but when he falls in love with a local woman, he begins to teach her the tango. Jones's latest is an imaginative love story well told. Recommended for all public libraries.Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2008
Shy New Zealand university student Lionel Howden takes a job as a dishwasher in La Chacra, a restaurant specializing in Argentine cuisine that is owned by the36-year-old, marriedRosa.She decides to teach himthe tango, and their smoldering eveninglessons soon leave Lionel in thrall to his employer, both on the dance floor and in the bedroom. She shares with him the history of her love of dance, telling him the story of her grandfather, Paul Schmidt, an itinerant piano tuner who was forced to hide out in a cave at the tail end of World War I with a local girldue to his German heritage.Paul and Louise turned the caveinto a dance studio to pass the time. Their subsequent, years-long affair and their insatiable love of dance mirror thestory unfolding between Lionel and Rosa. Jones, author of the critically acclaimed Mister Pip (2007), fills his novelwith vivid, quirky details and graceful proseas he tells dual stories of seduction set tothe sensuous music of the tango.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)