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Heartbreak Tango
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Wikipedia article
'Heartbreak Tango'Puig, Manuel. 'Heartbreak Tango'. Penguin Classics, 1996, p. 1. (original title 'Boquitas pintadas' in Spanish: "Little Painted Mouths") is a novel by Argentine author Manuel Puig.
It is Puig's second novel published first in 1969, following the circulation of his first novel, 'Betrayed By Rita Hayworth' ('La Traicin de Rita Hayworth').
Synopsis
Characters in the novel include Big Fanny, Nlida Fernandez, and Juan Carlos Etchepare.
The novel opens with the passing of Juan Carlos Etchepare due to tuberculosis. Then the book picks up with the lonely Nlida, a former small-town Argentine beauty who earned the title of Miss Spring 1936 in a rural village in Buenos Aires Province.
By 1947, Nlida is married to a boring and impoverished auctioneer in Buenos Aires. But Nlida still dreams of Juan Carlos Etchepare, the handsome youth that had swept Nlida "off her feet".
The body of the narrative portrays the character of Juan Carlos via the confessions, newspaper clippings, diaries, letters, eyewitness accounts, and remembrances of his life. In a sort of hodgepodge array of these sources, Puig uses the story of Nlida and Juan Carlos as the archetypal contrast between mediocre reality and fantastical dreams, for example when Nlida dreams of her celestial wedding ceremony to Juan Carlos in heaven while taking the bus with her children, only to be disturbed by her son who says he needs to pee.
The book touches upon questions of machismo and its damages to both the male and female characters.
Publication
The English version of the novel was translated by Suzanne Jill Levine from its Spanish version 'Boquitas Pintadas' and reissued by Dalkey Archive Press in 2010.
Film adaptation
In 1974, 'Boquitas Pintadas' was adapted into a movie of the same name.
References
Category:1969 novels
Category:Argentine novels
Category:Novels by Manuel Puig
Category:Novels set in Argentina
Category:Novels set in Buenos Aires
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