Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance [Paperback]

Lloyd Jones' HERE AT THE END OF THE WORLD WE LEARN TO DANCE follows a love affair that spans continents and decades that began during World War I in a cave in New Zealand when a young girl named Louise and a German piano tuner named Schmidt, whom she had hidden to save his life, dance a tango that lasts three minutes and fall immediately and forever in love. "She feels the piano tuner's hand arrive at the small of her back. The hand gives a little shove and resettles." Years later Schmidt's grandaughter, the sensuous Rosa, tells of Louise and Schmidt's great love affair to a much younger dishwasher-- he is 19; she is 36 and married-- Lionel who is besotted by her and who works in her restaurant where she teaches him the tango after hours.

Jones' novel teems with love, passion and ultimately great sorrow as, according to Ernest Hemingway, every love affair is tragic because it eventually ends in death. Louise and Schmidt's love story conjures up Hemingway's A FAREWELL TO ARMS, McEwan's ATONEMENT, Joyce's beautiful short novel THE DEAD, Marquez' tale of love in old age LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, even some of Robert Browning's poetry: "grow old along with me," for example.

Jones' haunting story of missed connections and love in old age really has no bad characters. Billy, for instance, the husband Louise leaves for Schmidt, is as decent a character as you are apt to find in any novel. In Louise's obsession, she goes to Buenos Aires where she never learns the language, hates Christmas because she always has to spend it alone and likes to meet Schmidt in later years on Sundays by the waterfront because she can see the horizon that reminds her of rural New Zealand. She has forsaken much, but she is saved from what Jones describes as a "wallpaper life." His description of her-- and much of his writing-- read like a prose poem: "Louise was usually the first one there [the waterfront]. There she is, sitting on a bench waiting for Schmidt to extricate himself from his comfortable apartment. . . He always hoped to see her first. Sometimes he did, and these days hobbling on bad knees he stops to squint into the untrustful distance, admiring the view. The way the river air pushes her skirt against her legs. To his eyes Louise is still young, forever young; the sight of her still excites."

Throughout these two love stories that have many parallels there is always of course the throbbing tango.

Highly recommended.

Argentinan Tango, according to author Jones, is about how you feel, and through Tango the characters in this somewhat confusing love story express their feelings to one another. This unique love story traces the relationships of primarily two main couples: Louise and Schmidt around WWI and Rosa and Pasta (Lionel) in the present day. But both love stories have side loves: Louise was originally married to Billy (and leaves him ultimately for Schmidt) but Schmidt is also married (Louise doesn't know this when she leaves Billy and travels across the world). Rosa is married to Ivan but is having a love affair with Lionel. While this sounds like the usual convoluted love triangles story, it is convoluted but it's not the usual. And it's the underlying tone as well as the underlying potential in several of the relationships that keep the story from being melodramatic.

The story is mostly told through the voice of Lionel who is a student in New Zealand and works at Rosa's restaurant. One night, Lionel is washing up late and Rosa, who is considerably older, asks him to dance. He is, initially, a horrible dancer but he begins to take dancing lessons and for the first half of the novel, Rosa and Lionel develop a dancing and talking relationship that only later turns to love. Lionel is a kind of unsympathetic character, which makes him unique. We don't know much about him except for his work with and love for Rosa and his distant relationship with his parents who he seems to be angry with. Lionel does not want to end up like them, living on their farm and tries hard to not get enmeshed in their difficulties, even when his father needs an operation. Rosa also isn't particularly sympathetic. She's a hard driving business woman who cheats on her husband who obviously loves her (but she feels he ignores essential parts of her). What's unusual is that these two main characters are, in many ways, "the bad guys".

Meanwhile, during Lionel and Rosa's relationship, Rosa tells the story of Louise and Schmidt. Schmidt was her grandfather. Louise and Schmidt met during WWII in a rather unlikely event but that ends up having them hiding with two Quaker pacifists (Billy and his friend). Out of boredom, Schmidt, a piano tuner, teaches them all to dance, and in the process they all fall in love with Louise. When Schmidt has the opportunity to leave, he basically abandons Louise and flees to Argentina only to discover he can't live without her. Meanwhile, she marries Billy. Louise and Schmidt start writing, and Louise starts dancing with her broom, learning the new steps he sends her. Billy realizes what's going on and basically tells Louise to go find her love and that he only wants her to be happy. Like Ivan, Rosa's husband, Billy truly loves his wife. Louise leaves, goes to Argentina only to find that Schmidt has gotten married to someone else and is having children. They start up a long term love affair.

What Jones does effectively is show the humanness of all of us. How love makes people do desperate and maybe selfish things but also, and more unusually, that losing the supposed "love of your life" is not the end of the world. Unlike some cheesy love stories, while things at the end "work out", they don't work out the way we would expect.

These two stories parallel throughout the novel and at times this gets confusing. Also, there are some plot devices that just don't work, but overall the novel does a nice job of showing how dance weaves a web around the people and also offers hope to those that get left behind. Without giving up the ending, the novel does not end on a depressing note, despite the dissolution of the major love affairs. And through dance, love lives on.

This is what is written on the back cover of this book. "Taking his cue from the tango ,the acclaimed author of Mister Pipp has written a thrilling and sensuous novel about how we fall in love."
C'mon now , how about some truth in advertising. I found none of the three elements mentioned anywhere during my reading of this book. Lets start with thrilling. Was it the very long tedious section where four of the charachters were hiding in a cave ? I don't know who was more bored during the cave ordeal. The cave dwellers forced to stay in their cave with little to do all day , the monotony dragging on seemingly forever or me , the reader , forced to read about their ordeal while the monotony did drag on forever. Maybe the author thinks despondency is thrilling. Next up is sensuous. No , not here. Bland is how I felt about the charachters ,their developement and interactions. Perhaps it was in the dance that the author thought he was conveying sensuality. The dance descriptives barely went beyond "...and then they danced...". Lastly , falling in love.I must have missed this part. I know I read the whole book , didn't skip a page but I don't recall anybody falling in love , being in love or talking about love. All they did was dance. Is this love ? Is this sensuous love ? Is this thrilling sensuous love ? This is an example of how bland this book is. This is an example of how the author thinks we fall in love. " He notices that she is young and healthy looking. She looks good in her denim jeans. Wait a minute , other men are noticing this as well. I better marry her." Is your heart beating faster now ? Is there a bead of sweat on your upper lip ?
I kept readin this book hoping that the bouncing from generation to generation and location to location would somehow mesh and the story would have a coherent conclusion. It didn't. What a waste of time. A complete tangoed mess.

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