Returning to A

by Dorien Ross

With one suitcase and a map drawn on a bar napkin as her only guide, sixteen-year old Loren travels to Moron del la Frontera in Andalusia to learn to play flamenco guitar from the Gypsies. Here she joins an extended family of flamenco artists and foreign aficionados whose adventures over a twenty-year period are interwoven with Loren's own odyssey. Her life with the Gypsies is haunted by the mysterious circumstances of her brother Aaron's death. Although they shared the same New York Jewish upbringing, he went to California during the expansive optimism of the sixties, while she went back in time to explore a rich music and culture. Their relationship is a dark love story that casts disquieting shadows over their years apart.

As Loren struggles to master an instrument traditionally off-limits to women, she finds her own path, inspired by the earthy wisdom of her Gypsy companions.

Dorien Ross lives in New York City. She studied flamenco guitar with Andalusian Gypsies. Her work has appeared in Best American Essays and in Tikkun.

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. I am sorry she never wrote anything else. Her passion for Flamenco, her search for authentic music and villages that takes her deep into the villages of Spain are reminiscent of my own search for authentic music in Greek villages.

[Paul Magnussen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a novel by a New Yorker who apparently studied Flamenco in Morón when Donn Pohren (author of The Art of Flamenco) was running the Finca Espartero with Diego del Gastor, since the Finca (although never mentioned by name) features prominently in the story. The ‘A’ of the title is the tonic A chord of the siguiriya.

“With one suitcase and a map drawn on a bar napkin as her only guide, sixteen-year old Loren travels to Morón de la Frontera in Andalusia to learn to play flamenco guitar from the Gypsies. Here she joins an extended family of flamenco artists and foreign aficionados whose adventures over a twenty-year period are interwoven with Loren’s own odyssey. Her life with the Gypsies is haunted by the mysterious circumstances of her brother Aaron’s death.

“[...] As Loren struggles to master an instrument traditionally off-limits to women, she finds her own path, inspired by the earthy wisdom of her Gypsy companions.”

To what extent this is fiction and to what extent thinly-disguised autobiography, then, is moot. Possibly it doesn’t matter; but I found the mixture rather uncomfortable. For instance, Diego is featured prominently by name (and his photograph is on the cover); but his nephews are listed (p.32) as Manuel, Ángel, Jesús and Rafael. What happened to Paquito, Juanito, Agustín and Dieguito? Some of the anecdotes are certainly accurate, since they’re also given in Donn’s A Way of Life. Neither Donn nor his wife Luisa, however, is ever mentioned. As to the other anecdotes, there are certain peculiarities. ‘Bar Pepe’ is presumably Casa Pepe, but Diego’s sisters are given as two instead of five (ibid.). And so on.

Another quirk is that a great deal of dialogue is given first in Spanish, and then translated. Now, if you speak Spanish, the translation is redundant; and if you don’t, the Spanish is just clutter. I’m not saying that a sprinkling here and there to add flavour is any problem, but in large doses I find this sort of thing very tiresome (indeed, it made the TV series A Year in Provence unwatchable for me). Your mileage may vary.

At the end, I felt that several questions were left unanswered — not least that of where the protagonist gets the money to go cavorting back and forth from the USA to Spain over a twenty-year period without apparently doing a stroke of work. In addition, I found the tone of the whole thing rather too — self-absorbed is the best word I can think of.

All in all, then, this wasn’t quite my cup of tea. But neither is Dan Brown, so that doesn’t mean much.

[Mona Molarsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written story about a young woman who goes to the town of Moron de la Frontera, Spain to study flamenco guitar. It's not an adventure story but rather a poetic evocation of flamenco, the music and the life. Although the publisher, City Lights presented it as a novel, it's actually closer to a memoir, where a few names have been changed to "protect the innocent." Flamenco aficionados who know anything about Moron during these years will recognize many of the characters, who were real figures on the flamenco scene in the 1960s and 1970s. But whether or not the story is true is less important than the spirit it conveys. It's a delight to read.