In a city in Mexico, three old high school friends who had a really wild love triangle/codependency thing going on reunite as wild fires encroach and things get really weird. Natalia is living with her boyfriend, a much older artist, and working on a choreography piece that she'll be putting on. Erre has just returned to town after a divorce and is having chronic pain. Conejo is stalled out, living with his blind father. It's a novel where a lot happens and also somehow a lot of nothing but it's still very good.
I think Natalia's section was my favorite. It takes the form of her choreography notes, so there are a lot of tangents about plants and medieval history that I enjoyed learning about a lot. I would have been fine with Natalia as the narrator for the entire book, but I also understand that it would not have been the same book if that had been the case. It's a pretty weird book, but the prose is fantastic.

I'm afraid this one wasn't for me. It was a deep surprise that the first POV protagonist was meant to be female. I also don't think that digressions strung together make storytelling, even if it's meant to be experimental/postmodern/literary. The writing is strong and atmospheric but I'm more of a plot-based reader.

3.5 rounded up to 4.

A novel with a remarkably interesting premise and start that slowly fizzles into something that feels like a puzzle with a missing piece.

The Dance and the Fire is about three friends who return to Cuernavaca, Mexico. Once high school friends, the three come together as fires destroy the landscapes around them as they grabble with the passion of their adolescence and the uncertainty of their future.

Theme and imagery wise, this was amazing. The themes of adolescence and adulthood were fleshed out and captivating. The use of the fire and hysteria in correlation to their three character's emotions was genius. The imagery itself was very frightful and honestly some of the most memorable horror images in recent memory.

Where I am stuck on is the story itself. Like I said earlier it has a strong start, but I was not sold on the ending--and the middle I found often repetitive.

Overall, I enjoyed sections of it, but I am still not completely sold on it as a whole. However, there is enough interesting metaphors and imagery here to warrant a read and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested.

A haunting tale of three high-school friends reencountering each other in a city surrounded by fire, THE DANCE AND THE FIRE is fraught, dark, and lyrical. Natalia is trying to choreograph a dance based on the dance plagues when Erre, her high school first love, returns to town—divorced, unemployed, with a receding hairline and chronic pain that leaves him seeking any drug for relief. Conejo, Natalia’s best friend and Erre’s sometimes lover, lives a life with no higher ambition than living with his blind father, earning enough as a freelancer to pay for his pot and pizza on 2x1 Tuesdays. Steeped in horror imagery (witches fucking the devil, contaminated water that makes people crazy, the encroaching flames), the three friends grapple with the reality of their lives as thirty-somethings compared to the bright flame of their teenage dreams.