Customer Reviews

The Dancer Upstairs: A Novel

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Shakespeare has turned out a tense and frightening tale. "The Dancer Upstairs" is about the violent and ultra-radical Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) insurgency in Peru in the 1980s and 1990s. The protagonist is Agustine Rejas, a policeman, who hunts down the guerilla leader, Ezequiel. Rejas reminded me of Arkady Renko, Martin Cruz Smith's Russian policeman in "Gorky Park" and other novels. He is an honest, decent, incorruptible man, whose virtues are little valued by the society of which he is a part.

Shakespeare tells a compelling story with literary flair and Reyes and the supporting cast, especially the guerilla Ezequiel, are strong, interesting characters. That is fortunate because the story is seriously marred. The author, for no good reason, relies heavily on several incredible coincidences to advance his story. Any hack detective story writer could have come up with a more inventive and believable way to tell his story than Shakespeare does. That being said, "The Dancer Upstairs" is still a cut above than the average political thriller. If you like Graham Greene or John Le Carre, you will probably like "The Dancer Upstairs."

This gripping story, a fictionalized account of a real wave of terrorism, is more than just a thriller. Author Shakespeare deftly weaves in an intense love story, a political thriller and a treatise on the Indian culture of the Andes. Shakespeare writes with passion, yet passion disciplined by a formidable control of the English language. This is a beautiful book, if that word can be used in a novel that centers around carnage. And, oh yes, if you are a fan of the dance, this book will be right up your alley. I found it a very enjoyable, compelling book.

Typically I have little patience for white men's stories about indigenous cultures, or political commentaries disguised as dramatic fiction. Superficially, The Dancer Upstairs is both of the above -- a mixed-race man in a mixed-race society, continually confused and yearning for what he knows not, and others like him, none realizing that it is all the same, that no one has the answers, not even el presidente Ezequiel. And yet the book is neither of these two things, for it is, at its heart, a love story. The unknowability of the human heart. The inevitability of fate. Suffering. The liquid richness of time -- how certain moments contract into nothingness and yet others expand in our memories, on and on, until we are nothing but those memories, nothing but a physical relic of those vapors of time.

The book is beautiful -- the entirety of it thoughtful and graceful like a dance. South America's vibrance is channeled through each page, and particularly via the large brown eyes of Yolanda. In Rejas, the main narrator, we find compassion, sensitivity, and an overwhelming humanity. He lives as if on the fringes of his own life, continually making space for the desires of others -- his wife Sylvina who yearns for Miami, his daughter Laura who lives to dance -- until he meets Yolanda, Laura's dance teacher, who brings out within him desires that can never be put to rest again. The story ends in what I can only call a collision -- but a collision that the reader has foreseen, and anticipates, perhaps as absolution. And even after the story has long ended, I find myself wanting to retread the steps up to the narrow balcony of the Catina de Lua, and imagine that Rejas and Dyer are due to reappear at any minute, and that Rejas will begin anew, to murmur of his past, and that I will listen humbly, as we all do, when faced with a tale of great sacrifice.

My book club read "The Dancer Upstairs" by Nick Shakespeare, and it was enjoyed by all. It tells a fictionalized account of the pursuit of the enigmatic leader of a Peruvian guerilla group. It vividly creates a world unnerved by the menace of political instability, and its varied effect on the citizenry. The main character, a police detective, and his wife represent this dichotomy: while the detective ardently pursues the guerilla leader, his wife is content to sell cosmetics and drive out of the way of bombed out streets.

Our one gripe with the book is that the plot hinges on two highly implausible coincidences. I won't give either away, but it didn't surprise me that the recent movie version did away with one of them.

All in all, a good read. The world is vividly depicted, the action brisk, and the resolution satisfactory. One note: if you buy the movie cover edition of the book, don't read the back copy. It gives one major twist away!

This book about revolutionaries in South America far transcends any cultural or geographical styles. The plot is intricate and diverse, the characters so alive you feel you are sitting with them, hanging on every word. Beyond the tragedies, are love stories filled with the small details that touch us.

Although never specifically identified in the book (or in the subsequent film), this book offers a gripping story of life in Peru during the height of the Sendero Luminosa (Shining Path) revolution in Peru. I thought it beautifully written. I travel to Peru frequently and found the depictions of Lima, the countryside and the people true to life.

In "The Dancer Upstairs," author Nicholas Shakespeare poses questions both personal and universal in his telling of the tracking and capture of Ezequiel, a Peruvian revolutionary (modeled on the real Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman, who was eventually captured in September 1992). The essence of the book lies most strongly with the central dilemma: Can you ever really know some one?

The story is a retelling by the police colonel who tracked Ezequiel for more than twelve years. While the tale is completely fictional, Shakespeare does a yeoman's duty in bringing to life the atmosphere of a country in terror. Through his writing, readers come to feel what it's like to fear the unknown around every corner, to be lying in wait for the next horrible thing to occur.

In the story, as police colonel Agustin Rejas follows the clues and as he gets closer to the terrorist, he also begins to feel how the reign of terror has intersected in a very personal way with his own life, from a massacre in his own home village near the Amazon to the connection with his own romantic feelings toward his daughter's ballet teacher (the "dancer" of "The Dancer Upstairs").

Rejas has agreed to tell his tale to journalist John Dyer, whose employer (a British newspaper) has recently decided to close the South American bureau at which he works, citing a lack of interest on the part of the rest of the world. Peru is alone with its problems. Making the situation worse is the government's attempt to take action, wielding a heavy-handed response by the military, whom the people see as little better (and perhaps even worse, in some cases) than the revolutionary group they are fighting.

Author Nicholas Shakespeare's writing is strong, and his tale unnerving. Living in the grips of daily blackouts, car bombs, and the brutal savagery of symbolic killings with their political messages, the author makes us feel the terror of a society on the edge of collapse. The experience of the ordinary citizen is shown here through Rejas's family life and their extended social network.

Some ignore the terror, trying to live out their lives as normally as possible. Some flee the country. Some believe that the terror can't touch them. In the end, the terrorists and their victims are nearly interchangeable, as shown so symbolically in the portraits at the dance theater near the end of the story.

What gives the book life and its power are the realistic portraits Shakespeare draws of his main characters. The Maoist revolutionary Ezequiel is plagued with a skin disease (whose signposts eventually lead to his capture), his revolutionaries are the sons and daughters of farmers and the middle class whose lives have been ruined by the government, the police are compromised and tainted. In the end, no one's hands are clean. Despite the best of intentions, the revolution and the government seeking to stop it are both guilty of heinous acts in the name of their cause. "The Dancer Upstairs" is not an easy book to read, but it's an important one as long as terrorism exists.

This is a richly-detailed story of a detective hunting down a Peruvian terrorist (the Shining Path?), and his growing relationship with his daughter's dance teacher: two parallel stories that ultimately converge. This brilliant novel works on many levels simultaneously: as politics and psychology, as a thriller and a love story, as a contrast between the urban high fashion of the city and the indigenous traditions and poverty of the country. It is a tale that combines extreme violence with understated eroticism. It is a story that involves children before their time in the the cruelties of the adult world, a book in which politics is theater and art can bring terror as much as transcendance.

The central story is framed by another one involving an English journalist meeting the detective by chance in Brazil; I am not convinced by the value of this device, but that may only be because I first saw the movie, which omits it. The final chapters, which return to Brazil, are rather an anticlimax, though perhaps a necessary one. In any case, the scenes between the journalist and the exiled detective in a waterfront bar on the Amazon are painted with that acute sense of atmosphere that characterizes all the settings in Shakespeare's remarkable book.

This reviewer finds the apparently widespread idea that this book may have anything to say about Peru during the Sendero insurgency frankly repulsive. Its overall tone is reminiscent of conversations among expats at the bar of some upscale Lima hotel, enlivened by the gossip of bored Peruvian wives. A more appropriate title could have been "Hannibal in Miraflores" or "Invasion of the Red Body Snatchers". It my appeal to readers who enjoy a mix of cheap terror and soap opera, sprinkled with reassuring stereotypes about South America, but it has literally nothing to do with the tragedy of Sendero and Peru. This is a passably written thriller, period. If you want insight into those times, look elsewhere, starting from Gorriti's book and Palmer's collection of essays.

This book, narrated trough the voice of the enquirer (the foreign correspondent) and the police man, reveals perhaps part of the story of a historical period of contemporary Peru. We hear the life of a police man, his houghts, his fears, his family routine, etc. We also are acquainted about how this foreign correspondent gets to this "dissident" of the peruvian police force, and the intricates of the organisation. But, besides the portraits of "insurgent young school girls of twelve years old" and "andean people full of hatred", we do not get further on the other side of this story. The dancer was downstairs, she was an instrument, some one whose hands were clean of blood, someone naive and idealistic, a beautiful girl coming from a good family. How about her inner world? The inner motif that lead her to assume that position? Was it only personal stories, or was it the history itself leading to violence, and more violence from all sides? Why only at last, the only attempt to reveal a bit about her is the talk with the ex-lover, and the former dance teacher? The policeman and the writer himself couldn't go on to her deeper psichyc and outline the complexity of how a modern dancer had come to choose this path, how this organisation succeded in attracting not only 12 or 13 year-olds...but became a national phenomenum? The book is leading and alienating, as if the only ones that had a life were the ones on the mainstream. The other complexity is left there unexplored, untouched. Would love to see the film, and to see that J. Malcovich works better at this aspect.