The Bad Girl - Mario Vargas Llosa

The seven-chapter structure is the clue.  The Bad Girl is Vargas Llosa's view of the Seven Ages of Woman. Written when he was nudging 70 it is, unfortunately, a tad sentimental, more than a little self-serving, and - it has to be said - downright misogynistic. Good old reliable, hard-working, studious Ricardo is always the good boy and the object of his lust (he prefers 'love of his life'), with her sudden disappearances, reinvention, forever changing persona and sexual self-indulgence, is perforce the bad girl.
You could certainly read The Bad Girl on that premise, and no doubt enjoy her fall from grace, the inevitable ruin of age and promiscuity. But never forget that Vargas Llosa is a genius. On a more prosaic note, remember his predilection for marrying relatives. This may reflect women he has known but he has surely never known a single woman like this bad girl.  This is fiction, not autobiography. So we should question Ricardo's self-righteousness - to what extent does he let himself be mistreated because that is how he likes it?  To what extent does he relish the ultimate triumph, when he gets to tend her like a pet because she has used up all the life in her whereas he has doled out his life, like Prufrock, in coffee-spoons? And Lily, who was never even Lily to begin with, what of the vast majority of her life which we don't see?  What caused her to live this life of assumed personas? How much of the pretense is artifice, how much delusion? In this respect, Vargas Llosa offers one insight, in the penultimate chapter, magnificently entitled "Arquimedes, Builder of Breakwaters".
The book only achieves maximum effect if you constantly challenge what you are being told. Even to the extent of asking, is Arquimedes really who he claims to be, or just an old chancer telling the guy who buys him drinks what he wants to hear? The bad girl is, after all, the good boy's dream girl. And The Bad Girl, the novel, is a magnificent achievement, published in the 21st century but really a classic of the late 20th. Hugely, unreservedly, recommended.

Others books by Mario Vargas Llosa discussed on this blog:
WHO KILLED PALOMINO MOLERO?
THE FEAST OF THE GOAT

Who Killed Palomino Molero? - Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa dips his toe into the whodunnit genre.  Obviously it's not as simple as that.  That the bolero singer turned volunteer airman Palomino Molero has been horribly, ritually killed is not in doubt, but even at the end who exactly did it and why is open to question.  And the cops are not exactly Scotland Yard or NYPD - just two unexceptional flatfoots from the local Guardia Civil in the rural middle of nowhere, which in Peru in the 1950s is pretty remote.

Why the 1950s?  I suspect the core of what is actually a novella was written back in the 50s, then rescued from the bottom drawer when Llosa got famous and heavily reworked.  I say reworked because all of the mature techniques are there: the elegant elision between past and present, memory and reality; the politics that underpin everyday life, even this far out in the backwoods; class prejudice; and, of course, the exploration of complex characters.  What, for example, is Alicia Mindreau's true state of mind?

Given the slim format, which feels just right for the subject, there is just one subplot - the comic infatuation of Lieutenant Silva for his Amazonian chubby Dona Adriana.  And the outcome of that is just as unexpected as the outcome of the main mystery.

Because it is very much centred in the landscape, there is far more description than in citybound Llosa novels.  I especially enjoyed the juxtaposition of the ocean and the blazing hot desert.  Only in Peru...

The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa

I can't imagine what I've been reading all these years.  How have I managed to miss out on contemporary South American fiction?  One fairly insignificant Marquez - that's my lot.  Then I saw this in the library.  I liked the cover, I liked the fact that Faber had reissued it as part of its Revolutionary Writing series.  I thought, why not?

I'm staggered.  It's a masterpiece, pure and simple.  It's so good, I bought two more before I'd even finished it.

The deal is this: Urania returns to the Dominican Republic after 35 years.  In all that time she has had no contact whatsoever with her family - her father, her aunt, her cousins.  She left for America at 14, smuggled out by nuns on a contrived scholarship.  Her life has been hugely successful professionally.  Internally, though, nothing whatsoever.  Through the book we discover why.

She left in 1961, just after the Generalissimo (Goat) was assassinated.  We also relive those events, with the dictator, his puppet president, his assassins.  Every one of dozens of principal characters comes alive.  From time to time we are even inveigled into empathising with the Goat himself.  It is so cleverly structured that it was only in the penultimate chapter that I guessed how Urania and Trujillo were connected.

Not so much a cracking read.  More a life-changing artistic experience.  Can't recommend it highly enough.