handmadeinmoste

The text on the back of the cover did not reveal anything about the contents. Only that at some point a small pair of shoes would appear. Maybe that is why I left it to rest for so long on the shelf. But, spring cleaning is upcoming or (almost) over and I found it again. This time I decided to start reading right away and I was surprized. Han, the main character in the book feels like he has failed in everything he has ever done. He never finished his univeristy studies, has never been with a woman, loves to dance (tango) but is afraid to ask a woman to dance and therefore he often has no partner to dance with, let alone someone he regularly goes to dance meetings with. His neighbour upstairs also loves to tango. She even travels to Buenos Aires for a couple of weeks and enthousiastically tells about it. Han does not go anywhere, but to the tango meetings. Suddenly he meets a woman there, Esther. They dance two dances together and when the evening ends, she asks him if he wants to be her partner at a milonga course. He accepts her offer. And with that the whole carrousel starts. Han and Esther become lovers. At first al looks well, but when more is revealed about Esther through the stories that she tells Han about herself, the more suspicious I got. Not Han at first, he is a bit green, remember. But, despite that, he also feels that things aren't adding up and when she tells him about her boyfriend in India, who comes over, he realizes that the realtionship is not without complications. When the day of arrival of the boyfriend comes closer, Esther even doesn't want to see him anymore. When the boyfriend arrives, Esther breaks her own rule of not going to see Han anymore. She goes to visit him and tells Han that he's very jealous. That she doens't remember him that way. Understandable, but.... She tells her boyfriend, that she met Han. So she's playing with both men at the same time. And, in the very end it turns out, that she has already met someone else, someone to start the whole thing over again. I liked the short story. It has 92 pages, but despite that, the story is complete. Told what needed to be told, in a way that was very satisfactory to me. A little bit of a mistery, which made me think, but also very human like, so very recognizable. I should have read it before, but, like I said, I had no idea where the book would take me, once I would have started. And, although I like surprizes, I do need some kind of hint, an idea of the place I'll travel to by the guidelines of the book.

2022-11-14 14:04