The Red Shoes by Genevieve Valentine

Go read The Red Shoes by Genevieve Valentine. It’s short and very, very good.

Carol shot herself because of her back ochos.

“Arciela said Carol was never going to get them sharp enough,” said Margaret at the wake, scooping macaroni onto a plate and handing it to one of the beginners. God knew who invited beginners. “She said Carol’s pivot was too shallow. No shoes in the world can fix a pivot like that,” she said.

It was a terrible thing that happened with Carol, but her ochos really weren’t going to get any better; that much we all knew.

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9 thoughts on “The Red Shoes by Genevieve Valentine”

  1. Thanks for posting a link to that story! The tango details are familiar to me since I’ve been doing some tango for the last four years. And she wrote a perfect tango story–I don’t think I can ever top that!

  2. I know nothing about tango. In fact, I looked up what an “ocho” is.

    I kept thinking “oh no, those shoes are cursed!” throughout the story though, knowing which original story it might have been based on. It was a great story though! (Though there’s no real happy ending, that is.)

  3. Great link and a wonderful story- thanks for posting it!

    A few years ago I grabbed a book from the library (which I’ve never been able to remember
    the title of since…ugh), about a journalist from New York who dumps her whole life and moves
    to Argentina to study tango for a few years. What an interesting subculture it is.

  4. > What an interesting subculture it is.

    You can say that again. From time to time, I hear or read strange stories about people who have the tango bug; for example, the Finns, of all people, are nuts about tango; and Robert Duvall’s wife left him for her tango instructor (well before he made his tango movie, “Assassination Tango”). . . .

  5. I’ll have to read this. I loved Genevieve’s Strange Horizons story (“29 Union Leaders Can’t Be Wrong”) and have been hoping for more of her stories to start showing up.

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