Kiss and Tango: Looking for Love in Buenos Aires [Hardcover]

Marina Palmer (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When 30-year-old Palmer announced she was abandoning her Manhattan apartment, ditching her stressful advertising job and leaving the unhappy singles scene to take up professional tango dancing in Buenos Aires, her upper-crust parents were understandably dubious. Of course, the tango isn't just a dance—it's a grand metaphor for sexual pursuit. Beginning with a nod from the man, signifying his desire for a particular woman, tango continues in a series of moves resembling stylized foreplay. After a few agonizing years of trying to combine her Manhattan day life with a tango nightlife, in 1999, Palmer moved to Argentina. She spent almost every night until dawn dancing at various venues, occasionally bringing home a partner, and her trials on the dance floor—aching feet, battered shins—were only compounded in the bedroom. After absorbing five years of diary entries, readers will feel at home with Buenos Aires street life and almost accustomed to the retrosexual politics of the tango scene, so when Palmer says things like, "I wish all men knew how I long to be treated like an object," they sort of know what she means. Although feminists may bristle, other readers may well enjoy Palmer's engagingly reckless spirit.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Everything is exciting in Argentina! The climate! The people! The dancing! Once readers get past the immature use of exclamation marks, they will find an interesting memoir of a thirtysomething woman disenchanted with her high-powered advertising-executive job who yearns to indulge her true passion--the tango. In a cheeky exchange with her conservative father, the author wheedles enough money to live on in Buenos Aires for her "education" in the art of the tango. There follows a parade of possible dance partners and lovers, some dashing, others dullards, but all well versed in the sexy dance. Readers should not expect to learn very much about the dance and its history, the shock of uprooting from one culture to another, or how a novice becomes an accomplished dancer. The writing is unpolished. But readers who wonder what it's like to give up a lucrative career to follow their bliss will enjoy the breathless tone and the author's unaffected appreciation for her new life experiences. Kaite Mediatore
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (June 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060742925
• ISBN-13: 978-0060742928
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,281,656 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #81 in Books > Arts & Photography > Performing Arts > Dance > Popular

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Make no mistake, Ms. Palmer demonstrates NO authority on the subject., February 2, 2006

By 

I Hate Amazon "contributor" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kiss and Tango: Looking for Love in Buenos Aires (Hardcover)

After a long period of reservation about whether I wanted to write an unkind review for something, or give a product more attention than it deserved, I couldn't restrain myself any longer after seeing the author on a television program speaking as if she was a representative of the dance and of the scene in Buenos Aires. This bothered me terribly because, as evidenced by this book, she is nothing but a wide eyed, patronizing, privileged tourist. It's bad enough that she is a terrible writer--her descriptions are riddled with cliches (more than once she describes a crowded dance floor as being packed "like a can of sardines") and her explanations of tango terms and customs for non-aficionados are awkwardly shoehorned into the narrative--thereby belying the "diary" format--or briefly used to introduce sections as a heavy handed thematic primer. As for her "authority," it is essentially reduced to name dropping of people and places which are more legitimately established in the tango scene. Okay, up to this point it's just a bad book, no big deal. What really gets me is her utter narcissism and exploitation of the culture and tradition that define this great city. Of course, the premise of the book is of a dissatisfied woman in New York who rushes off to BsA to find romance and adventure, but the hope (for the reader) is that somewhere along the way, she will shed her exoticism of the culture and come to a deeper understanding and appreciation of it and be able to convey that to us. Unfortunately, that never happens. Throughout the book the narrator remains steadfastly self-indulgent. For example, near the end she describes the lockdown of the banks and the forced conversion of pesos, which threw the country into chaos and dropped the majority into poverty. Yet her primary concern was that she would be unable to do her street performance. Such callous disregard illuminates two things very clearly. First, she is a very unlikeable narrator. Secondly, she is NO porteña. I cannot give a lower recommendation.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing and shallow, February 10, 2006

By 

A. C. Marsh - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Kiss and Tango: Looking for Love in Buenos Aires (Hardcover)

I was so looking forward to this as I had just returned from my own solo vacation to Argentina and I thought this book would be a fun read and reminder of my trip. What a disappointment. Marina Palmer claims to have passion for the tango, but she only tells and not shows us this. She comes off as being a spoiled, narcissistic spoiled girl of 19, not a woman in her 30s. Her cliche-ridden prose merely describes her sexual conquests and illustrates her utter inability to form both friendships and relationships of substance. Argentina and tango have been done a real injustice by this shallow memoir.

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Sex and the Spoiled-Little-Rich Girl, September 11, 2005

By 

Cherie Magnus (Buenos Aires, Argentina) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kiss and Tango: Looking for Love in Buenos Aires (Hardcover)

Sorry to bring a little reality to the heavy-breathing enthusiasm, but I had hoped this book would be a little bit about tango.

Instead it's the tale of a spoiled thirty-year-old (!) "girl" who talks her wealthy family into supporting her whim of becoming a professional tango dancer in Buenos Aires. Along the way to the realization two years later that it will never happen, she seduces and sleeps with every Argentine male she can get her hands on, even the delivery boy.

Without previous dance training (she worked in advertising in New York), she had a fantasy of dancing on stage, and at the same time, of finding her "Other Half of the Orange" who also is a Tango God.

Set up comfortably in a luxury apartment and spending her parents' $2,000 U.S. per month on tango classes, shoes and cafes con leche, she brings man after man to her bed, and sometimes two at a time, and doesn't spare us the details.

The book only gets interesting at the end when the Economic Crisis hits Argentina in 2001, but running from the turmoil, Marina quickly escapes to her relatives' elegant country ranch far from the disquieting events in the city. And then, giving up the dream, she returns to the States.

The writing is full of cliches, the lovers are indistinguishable, the women invariably turn out to be "bitches."

So I'm still waiting for someone to write about Argentine Tango in Buenos Aires. Slutty sex is everywhere.