Yeah, I've been reluctant to read this ER, frankly because of the cover. Although I wanted to read a book set in Argentina the cover was a complete turnoff. None the less, I finally delved in to this novel to find that Daisy is an American divorcee and has been having unexplained fainting spells. Doctors recommend she gets away for a while and her friend Brian tells her he's able to offer her a grant to study the water works of Buenos Aires, a subject to which she is a complete novice. Upon her arrival she discovers a water problem within her own apartment and meets her first acquaintance in BA, Gabriel, a gigolo who hires himself out to other men. I instantly liked the guy, he tries to be helpful and has the connections to come to Daisy's aid. Second friend is Leonarda, a local who wants to meet a foreigner. She shows Daisy all the excitement and perversity that BA has to offer. Next major character is Isolde an Austrian who tries to fit into BA aristocracy and wishes to work in the arts. A few minor characters include Mario and Nadia, Mario's background is rather vague but Nadia is a solid personality.
With so much going on in BA and with water all around her, flooding, dirty , purified and seeping, Daisy has little time to work on her report yet when she does it's usually info found on her computer.
So what does one take away from this novel? Perhaps it's that Buenos Aires is a cesspool of nationalities trying to meld together. Or, maybe, a foreigner can attempt to fit in but in actuality, can not. I don't know! I don't understand what this story is trying to get across. But it's certainly no travelogue and it doesn't entice me to call my travel agent any time soon Or for that matter read another book written by Maxine Swann. ( )

In "The Foreigners," a young American woman travels to Argentina to live abroad in the glamorous, exotic city of Buenos Aires. Upon her arrival, she is introduced to an eclectic cast of characters, including a gay stripper / medical student, a lustrous and vibrant Argentinian woman, an Austrian high society girl, and a wealthy older man. The book wanders through various experiences that the main character has with these people and with the city itself.

I chose to read this book solely based off of its setting. Buenos Aires is a city that I desperately want to travel to someday, and I hoped that this novel would capture some of the Borgesian intrigue that I feel for it. Though I am unable to say exactly how accurate the author was, I certainly got a sense of her version of the city. I fell in love with the setting - or, the distinct flavor and atmosphere of the setting - more than any other aspect of the book.

My second reason for enjoying this book was the strange, atypical, and at times dark twists that it gradually pulls you into. The story begins chipper enough, but by the last few chapters, Daisy and her friend Leonora actively work to bring about the slow psychological ruin of an older man - seemingly for no reason other than that of a coolly observed experiment.

As much as I enjoyed it, the story was not without its flaws. The book did not have much focus. The characters were interesting and memorable, but not extraordinary. In the beginning, Swann sets up a storyline about the main character coming to Buenos Aires to investigate the failing of the water system, but this plot is later discarded and forgotten. One characters' happy ending was a bit too neat and unconvincing.
And yet somehow, I absolutely loved this book. Somehow, with all its quirks and strangeness and periods of tedium (for example, lingering quite awhile on the main character fixing a broken appliance), it added up to something beautifully lyrical and realistic.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. ( )

Having spent 4 months last year in Buenos Aires I was anxious to read this novel by someone who lived there. It was a major disappointment. There was no depth to any of the characters. Unless the 2 foreigners spoke perfect Spanish, I doubt that they would have moved so easily through Buenos Aires society. This story takes place after the Argentine debt default and the fall of the Peso, yet this reality does not find itself into the novel. She mentions You Tube which did not even exist when the novel took place. She actually spent 3 pages describing a flood in the apartment. No I did not see any major water theme being played out. 3 more pages about Isolde getting her hair colored or not. These added nothing to the story. It is okay for characters to not be likable but at least make them interesting. The ending with Isolde giving up her upscale ambitions for the simple life was a cliche. Cannot recommend this book. ( )

Forget Paris: Buenos Aires is terra nova for the next generation of urban novel, and Maxine Swann provides a fresh perspective on expatriates trying to rewrite their lives in a struggling city.

Daisy is a recently divorced American newly arrived in Buenos Aires on a grant to study the city's water system, though she is more often found languidly studying the sheen of water running down the white wall of the adjacent building out her window rather than Buenos Aires' actual waterworks. Isolde is a polished, golden Austrian who aspires to be an ambassador to the international art world while strategically maneuvering among the cocktail party circuit. Leonarda, a radical and possibly mentally unstable Argentinean native, takes Daisy under her wing and exposes her to the city's seedy underbelly and anarchist factions. "The Foreigners" meanders and twists its tale of these three women and the city they inhabit, digressing in some places and speeding along in others, but mostly taking the reader along for an interesting voyage to parts unknown.

Water serves as an interesting trope throughout the novel, though not in the trite manner of symbolizing life, death, and rebirth. This becomes evident near the end of the novel when Daisy comes upon a book left behind her apartment's owner entitled "La Creciente," or the tide:
"The city was constructed on the edge of a river, but it wasn't a companionable river on whose shores inhabitants could walk, that linked up between welcoming piers, under bridges with memorable names, one of those rivers that it was enough to mention to situate immediately the city which is its near-synonym: the Seine; the Tiber, the Thames, the Guadalquivir, the Moscow. It was a river independent from the city like a watery slice attached to it, a river that men didn't need to cross to go from one end of the city to another, that didn't impose itself on their vision and about which they hardly every thought, since weeks and even months could pass without seeing it. . .It was a South American city and maybe for this reason the river was different from those of European cities. Everything about South America is different from Europe, something that saddens and humiliates the inhabitants of this continent, even leading them to deny this reality. Its landscapes, its, people, its elements, its political events, its rivers are different It was difficult to reach this particular river. A foreigner, attracted one day by the copper color of its waters, scenes on a postcard, wanted to find it and throw in a coin, and indispensable ritual when you arrive at any city where there's a river. . . people had forgotten that they had a river and they neither feared nor enjoyed it. Maybe the foreigner managed to make it out from the top of a modern building or possibly he had to travel several kilometers away in order finally to catch a glimpse of the river on whose shores the city had been constructed." (171-173)

Water is thus at one both alien and alienating, all but forgotten by the native inhabitants. Other parts of the novel bring to mind "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner's "Water water everywhere / Nor any drop to drink," as Daisy meets a medical student, Gabriel, when there is literally not a drop of water coming from her faucets, and elsewhere makes note of the city's poor drainage system that fails to capture the runoff as streets and the first floors of houses in poor neighborhoods flood, and of water's dripping down on the heads of passersby from plants and trees. Daisy makes two pilgrimages to the Rio de la Plata and one to the Riachuelo, which mirror the foreigner's quest in the novel within the novel. On her first two voyages, Daisy experiences vertigo, and the rivers turn out to be something of a mirage, and on the final one, as she crosses the Rio de la Plata into Uruguay, "the brown water transformed by night and the movement of the boat into a black sheet scattered continuously with white diamonds." In the end, Daisy moves from studying water to studying the water hyacinth, which would seem to be part of the invasive foreign plant species which served as a metaphor throughout the novel for foreigners in Argentina like Daisy and Isolde but which her friend Gabriel turns on its head by saying "further study of the natives." ( )

Essentially, this novel is narrated by an American woman, recently divorced, named Daisy. Her name isn't really that important, however, and is really only rarely mentioned, in passing - she is a nameless American, going through a hard time, who has escaped to Buenos Aires to hopefully regain a sense of self. She meets some interesting people, such as Gabriel, the gay prostitute who has dropped out of med school and tells her she should "try everything."

Two people, in particular, are focused on, however - the Argentine native Leonarda, and the Austrian immigrant Isolde.

Both Leonarda and Isolde help our heroine/protagonist/American character through providing glimpses into different lives, providing friendship, and expanding Daisy's horizons.

I really enjoyed this novel, despite its' rather aimless feel, and the fact that it doesn't really go anywhere. At the end of the novel, there is no grand epiphany, but the journey of the novel is an interesting, intelligent one.

One of the odd things about this novel is that the author Maxine Swann is from America, herself, yet the novel has the feeling of a novel that has been translated. There is a murkiness to the story. The words are all discernible, but the manner in which they are put together, while coherent, brings forth a slightly fuzzy picture in the readers' mind. I liked this quality, personally, but can see it proving irritating to some readers.

Another quality which did not particularly bother me, but that might bother the reader, is that, overall, I'm not entirely sure the characters are likeable.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this novel, a copy of which I was lucky enough to receive an uncorrected proof.