Marsh offers short sketches of his travels in Argentina--walking up steep hills with pilgrims, listening to the poetry of declining aristocratic landowners, riding around on buses, being dumped by his tango instructor, bunking on the floor of local schoolhouses in places where there are no arrangements for tourists and witnessing the gulf between indigenous people and European emigrants. These are all lightweight, and Marsh knows he is an outsider, but it is very striking that he steers way around the ugly past except for one man's reminiscence of the Perons.

Thanks to Netgalley and Matador for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Argentina is a fascinating country. Both its history and its landscape are dramatic, and the passion of its people is well displayed on their tangos. Needless to say I would very much like to go to Argentina, especially to Patagonia.

This book is full of color and amazing descriptions. It has an historical overview and lots of interesting people that the author has met along the way. However, it feels a compilation of interesting episodes rather than a full journey. It lacks a train of thought or story, even if geographical, to get me fully absorbed in the book. It took me a while to realize the author was doing some kind of north-south cross country.

I believe the experiences lived and the people met deserved to have been better captured on paper. It was almost there, but in the end it was just missing something.

On a very positive note, it's not always that we find reference to a Portuguese Poet in a foreign book, in this case Guerra Junqueiro. Points for that.


https://peixinhodepratablog.wordpress.com/2016/03/07/a-terra-do-fim-do-mundo/