'Brane Love, a Mythologist going on sixty, after several month's fieldwork reconnects with his Jive/ Rock 'n Roll dance school, 'Shuffle Jive.' He meets Rosetta, a feisty little Sicilian nurse in her mid-fifties, and falls in love with her. Over the years they establish a close friendship as dancing partners. But Rosetta has a boyfriend, Arnold, to whom she remains faithful. At the same time, she is secretly in love with Brane. But the relationship between her and Brane sees little change. They continue meeting at the classes and dancing together while friends around them break up and come together as a sort of backdrop to Brane's and Rosetta's impasse, real life getting in the way of the dancing pastime and proving that older persons get into awkward situations as much as younger people. The novel ends in slapstick chaos with pratfalls and rescues. There is no clear resolution of the relationship between Brane and Rosetta, except for a tacit understanding between them, just as in real life.' (Publication summary)
