BOOKS

At Half-Light: A Story of Tango and Memory

Interpreting Silence

From 1976 to 1983, during a brutal military regime in Argentina, thousands of people disappeared. In At Half-Light, Alejandra’s parents have fled the dictatorship and settled in Peterborough, Canada. As a child, she discovers they have been keeping terrible secrets from her and suffers from nightmares. She is comforted by her grandfather’s stories of his life as an orphan in a tenement house in Buenos Aires at the turn of the last century. The stories are filled with colourful characters – singers, thieves, and fortune tellers. He fills the house with tango music and teaches her to dance. When her grandfather begins to lose his memory, Alejandra writes his stories down so they won’t be forgotten and goes to Buenos Aires to look for a well-known tango singer who may be one of the women in the stories. There, she meets Las Madres, mothers still searching for their children who disappeared, keeping their stories alive. The trip to Argentina and her relationship with Silvio, an artist from Buenos Aires, are part of Alejandra’s long journey to face the pain and loss in her family’s past. If our stories are told, we do not disappear.

Reviews of At Half Light

"Through the vivid characters in At Half-Light, Linda Walsh tells the story of life before and after the times of The Disappeared. Struggling with the lasting effects of a national tragedy, they carry a fierce desire for justice and remembrance. And always, there is tango – the lyrics, the music, the dance. Filled with joys and sorrows, kindness and love, Walsh’s characters live. Poignant and funny, moving and beautiful."

IRENE GUILFORD, author of The Embrace and Waiting for Stalin to Die.

"At Half-Light is a rich, emotional novel of intersecting stories that merge past and present and the distant geographies of Canada and Argentina. These are family histories of legendary characters and the recent tragic past of terrorism in Argentina during the 1970s. In this beautiful novel, filled with images that leave a strong visual imprint, the memories that the Tango brings with its music, its poetry, and the unmistakable embrace of its dance come together, meet, and flourish."

MIGUEL LIBEDINSKY, director and producer of the film, Hearts of Tango.

This is a story of exile, both physical and emotional. Nick, an aspiring writer just out of high school feels disconnected from friends and family and leaves his home in Canada to travel through Europe. In Portugal, he meets Susannah, a free-spirited Canadian artist. She is the first person he has ever felt completely connected to, and he follows her back to Canada. The memory of Susannah haunts all of Nick’s relationships over the next twenty years, and he continues to drift. The people he meets along the way – Deirdre, Santos, Karen, and Harry, who have been forced to leave their home countries and settle in Canada – help Nick to come to terms with his feelings of emotional exile. And an unexpected telephone call is the catalyst for him to face what he has been running from.