Customer Reviews

Bad Times in Buenos Aires

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

I had the privilege of living in Buenos Aires from my late childhood through mid-teens. I adore Buenos Aires and consider it and New York to be my hometowns.

In many ways, I'd say that this book could've been written about New York - both are huge, vibrant, overwhelming, dirty, sparkling, and absolutely magnificent places, founded by fortune-seeking immigrants and constantly seeming to be on the verge of crisis. And like New Yorkers, Portenos take great pride in the fact that they live in such a place - our big is the biggest, or bad is the worst, and our good is the absolute best. And we wouldn't have it any other way.

I like that Ms. France didn't gloss over or marginalise the ever-present image of Eva Peron - unlike so many writers, who seek to minimize her continuing influence, or relegate it to the old, Ms. France shows that even in this day, Evita has a hold on the nation she did so much to help. I'm proud to say that my family - both my mother's (Jewish) and my father's (Italian) were and remain committed Peronistas, and even during the darkest years of La Guerra Sucia, they kept their pictures and books by Evita - and both sides still use the prayerbooks put out (both Catholic and Jewish) after her untimely passing, which feature prayers for her. I still have mine, and continue that tradition here in the States.

My main beef with the book was that it wasn't longer. Write more of the vibrant streetlife and cafe society! Mention the food, the joys and terrors of taking the underground, the Spanish so liberally peppered with Italian and Yiddish! Reading this brought on a bittersweet sense of homesickness, and mandates a trip home soon (I literally got a lump in my throat when Ms. France described the Peronista rally where they chanted "Se Siente - Se Siente - Evita Esta Presente!" - the same chant we would exultantly howl during our Peronista Youth Front meetings before the catastrophe...

Ms. France got one thing wrong - Buenos Aires Te Mata is NOT a lament, it's a boast, a challenge to the world. Most Portenos say it with perverse pride, and would consider it a badge of honour. After all, it's a rare privilege to be able to say it!

Even bad times in Buenos Aires beat good times almost everywhere else!

Miranda France's book is wonderful. It looks like many of the reviewers here on Amazon think that France should have sugarcoated her experiences with unctuous and patronizing enthusiasm. Through her fine writing, France seems rigorously honest. If you want shallow pleasantries talk to a diplomat or buy a postcard. If you want to know what BA is really like, read this book.

Obviously, I'm not the only one who is occasionally frustrated with Latin culture. The have-nots truly have not and barely exist. The haves are usually deeply narcissistic and preoccupied with appearance, class and race (France wrote about one woman who boasted she was 100% European and pretty much grateful that most of the native peoples of Argentina had been exterminated).

France has great talent! I think she was just in her 20's when she wrote this book. If I were she, however, I would have given the book a different title. For those of you who have been offended by this book, maybe you need to look a bit deeper.

Having lived in Buenos Aires for two years and loving my stay in Argentina, this book was a difficult one to read. It does not capture the romantic image of Buenos Aires that I like to remember.

Still, it is a very healthy counterpoint that one needs to be aware of if they are going to live in Buenos Aires as something other than a tourist. The chapter on psychoanalysis reflects a special insight on the people who live there. Alas, her observations were something I heard from many Argentines. To this day it is something that I will never understand.

Yes, it is true that a book like this can be written on any city. In fact, I think Los Angeles, New York and other U.S. cities already have their fair share! It is not especially racist, to use one reviewers words, to spread the wealth of seeing the less desirable features of any culture.

After saying all that, I like the country and think that France was a little too negative. Buenos Aires is not a city that tourists will get to know. It is a city where one survives on relationships. As with any place in the world, if you associate with those of a cheerful and positive outlook, your own views will be optimistic. The reverse is also true.

Miranda France's intention is not to address the Argentine culture in an academic way but to share with the reader her stay in the "Paris of the Americas". I have to agree that potential visitors to Buenos Aires may not find it very encouraging nor touristically informative. Yet foreigners who have lived or live in Buenos Aires will find in this book the perfect answer to family and colleagues' questions: so, how is it other there, in Argentina? This book made me laugh about my misfortunes in Buenos Aires and made me realize I would miss this damn place when I go...Delightful.

Three-and-a-half stars rating, really.

I think that it is unreasonable to expect a travel book to be anything except the author's perpective on the places visited. French clearly brings her own (British) agenda to Argentina, but she also just as clearly makes an effort to move beyond that to present a balanced look at the city she was living in. I found it a good read (almost too quick) and a well-formulated one. It was worth the time that I took to read it.

Good points:

France owns her own prejudices. She is very careful to note when she was being cranky and British about something so that the reader is clear that it is her persective and not the voice of authority.

I also like that she did not try to take a sweeping 20,000 foot view of the culture, but limited her commentary to those aspects to which she had access.

Less Good Points:

She treated some subjects (the Faulkland Islands, for example) more quickly than they seemed to deserve and at times that left me with the frustrating feeling that there was more to say about a subject but she had already moved on to the next point. I do not think that it needed to be much longer, but a little more filling in areas that got short shrift would have been good.

At times her writing was a little too precious and tried a little too hard to make all her moments meaningful. One of the things that makes a writer like Chatwin so great is that he does not try to connect the dots for the reader and is very sparse in the way that he handles detail.

The final very best point is that I enjoyed reading it and it inspired a desire to know more about the subject-- which is, I suppose, the ultimate point. Recommended if you like travel books.

Miranda France's first book is a neat, informative and sometimes amusing introduction to Buenos Aires: its history, culture and people. Whilst I started off with only a general curiosity for Argentina, my interest has been much awakened by the author's vivid and thoroughly researched accounts. France takes the reader through her experiences in Buenos Aires by focusing on a series of different aspects of the city and its culture: Evita, the Falklands, the `Dirty War' and the preoccupation with self analysis provide several examples. This approach is made interesting through the way France depicts the time she spent there, shown through meetings with many different people. These range from neighbours, to workers in cafes and stalls, to more prominent members of Buenos Aires society - with a chilling revelation made by one person that she talks to featured towards the end of the book.

However, what comes across more than anything is the sadness which seems so deeply built into Buenos Aires: the `disappeared', the story of Evita, the origins of tango, and Argentine `bronca' all reflect an unsettled culture which, ultimately, France herself becomes caught up in. In the end, it is this that wills her back home, though she must now look back with much affection.

This is a fascinating first picture of a city and country many of us do not know much about. `Bad Times in Buenos Aires' is a treat to read, and despite what the title suggests, may even encourage one or two readers to go and experience it for themselves. Definitely a recommended book for anyone who enjoys good travel writing.

Buenos Aires! The Latin Paris! Or so its residents like to think. To the annoyance of their South American neighbors, Argentines seem to believe that their country is a large chunk of land that split off from Europe and just happened to float down south of the equator.

The history of Argentine does not wholly undermine such a mindset. At the turn of the 20th Century, it was the 6th wealthiest country on the planet, with a potential as rich as the soil of the Pampas. Now, it is an economic basket case. What happened? And what is life in Buenos Aires like, living in the shadow of failed potential? Miranda France, an Englishwomen who spent several years in Buenos Aires in the mid-1990s, lets us know in BAD TIMES IN BUENOS AIRES, a fun and entertaining book. Though, to be honest, the title is a bit misleading. Despite the daily inconveniences and foibles of the city, there were good times to be had, as well.

Much of the book is composed of France's personal anecdotes of her own life in the Buenos Aires. She tells of the endless frustrations with poor telephone service and long lines for everything. She also provides us with a glimpse into the soul of the Argentine people. After the failed economic policies of Peronism, followed by the military dictatorships and the `Dirty War,' the city and its citizens seem enveloped in an all encompassing melancholy. The zeitgeist reminds me a great deal of that described in Orhan Pamuk's excellent book ISTANBUL, in which the residents of that metropolis live continually in the shadow of a once great, but now gone, empire.

Perhaps as a result, Buenos Aires now has about three times the psychoanalysts as New York City, the profession probably being more common than that of a shoe shine boy. Even the tango, the only dance specifically condemned by a Pope, reflects the sadness of the two dancers and the environment in which the dance came to fruition.

France captures the mood of the city and its people excellently and relays it to us entertainingly. That she is English probably makes her experiences that much more interesting, as the Argentines seem at once intrigued by the British, especially its royals, while at the same time acutely pained by the sting of having lost the Falkland War to those same Brits. If the residents of Buenos Aires are ambiguous about Europeans to begin with, France no doubt felt the ambiguity even more.

BAD TIMES IN BUENOS AIRES is not a difficult book. Its quirky title should be a clue that the book seeks to entertain as well as inform, and, for the most part, it succeeds. If you are intrigued with the more distant corners of our globe, those places where things do not necessarily always go so smoothly, then you should definitely check it out.

Like many English travel writers, Ms. France blends very well in the society she describes, and captures masterfully all kinds of moods, nuances and details. Her choice of subject for the ten chapters is a happy one, perhaps with the exception of the chapter on the pampas, a bit out of pace with the rest. Unfortunately, despite all her (I am sure, genuinely) best effort, English travelers abroad can never leave home a sort of superiority complex so that foreign ways of doing things inevitably end up looking just a bit silly! This book reminds me of Tim Parks' books on Italy: both France and Parks clearly love their subject countries, but can not help looking down upon it... albeit perhaps unconsciously! A great collection of pictures well worth reading!

This book is not as bad as some reviews says. May be is not entirely accurate, but you should keep in mind the period in Argentina (1993-1994, the highest point of the Menem era) and the kind of people she had met (upper middle class). Many observations are really true (bank employees smoking on your face, lng queues for everything, the "cafecito" tradition, the "desaparecidos" stuff, etc.).
Many argentine people could be upset by this book, but it had its moments. You can't take it as sacred word, but it's not "only a bunch of lies" as someone said.
Read it, and read another books on Buenos Aires. And if you can, come to experiment by yourself!!!

I admire Ms. France's ability to have captured this city's psyche. How could people have lived through what they did over the past half-century and not be in emotional turmoil? How else could they rationalize all that has been squandered and pillaged: the lost promise of a country and city as proud and successful as any in western Europe or the new world (Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand...). How could they have tolerated the regimes of the Generals and Admirals? Or created the myth of Evita?

Like Ms. France, I loved Buenos Aires and its inhabitants, but not enough to marry them and make them a part of my family. No wonder some of the reviewers on this page are outraged: they do not want to face up to the past of this amazing city and society. (My what Buenos Aires could have been, combining the architectural charm of Paris, the culture exuberance of Madrid, the entrepreneurial dynamism of New York, the fine weather of Miami, and the overall affluence of London.) And maybe these writers are right in claiming that a Brit like Ms. France -- or a Canadian like me -- cannot objectively write about their city. Maybe, but I doubt it. One only has to wander into Herrods on the Florida Mall to realize how broken a dream Argentina and Buenos Aires have become. Even the grander emporia of the Galerias Pacifico cannot make amends for the shabbiness of the metropolis itself. The residents do try to make the best of what they have, and must be admired. But they have been so betrayed by their forebearers that pyschosis is inescapable.

And this is what Ms. France has so perfectly caught in this diary of her days in Buenos Aires.

Certainly, a book like this could probably be written about just about any large city in the world, and each country does tend to have its own psychological profile. But this book is about Buenos Aires, and that city's psychosis is laid bare in it. The book's critics might well look to curing the disease, rather than trying to shoot the messenger.

I plan to return to Buenos Aires later this year (if I'm let in after this review) because despite all the foregoing, and all the things included in Ms. France's book, it is a city well worth visiting and spending time in. If only to understand how it got this way...