"Het ongrijpbare meisje is Vargas Llosa's eerste echte liefdesroman," staat er op de achterflap en dat wil wat zeggen als het blijkbaar 47 jaar heeft moeten duren. Misschien vooral dat Mario Vargas Llosa niet in de wieg gelegd is voor liefdesromans, want het liefdesverhaal dat hij hier neerpent is niet echt mijn idee van een liefdesverhaal. Wat een vervelend mens is "het ondeugende meisje" toch, en wat een vreselijke streken lapt ze het hoofdpersonage dat om god weet welke reden (ze is mooi! ze is onvoorspelbaar!) zijn hele leven lang verliefd op haar blijft. En als hij het allemaal vertelt aan een bevriend koppel, dan vinden ze het een schitterende liefdesgeschiedenis! Euh, nee.
De schrijfstijl van Mario Vargas Llosa is bij momenten exuberant, waarbij je bedolven wordt onder adjectieven en feiten in een enkele zin. Het is een schrijfstijl die helemaal niet past bij het eerder banale liefdesverhaal, al is de historische context wel interessant. Het is een schrijfstijl die een volwaardig verhaal verdient. Kortom, misschien had ik als eerste boek van Mario Vargas Llosa niet zijn "eerste echte liefdesroman" moeten lezen.

Vargas-Llosa-lite but it is still more entertaining and heartfelt than most books

This thing broke my heart and made it whole again all at the same time. Vargas Llosa made expert use of letters and milieu to mark the passage of time and the main character’s unchanging love for the bad girl. Delightful and devastating in equal measure.

akan bir hikâye, buna mukabil girilmeseydi de olurdu diyeceğim türden detaylar (yakuzanın yaptığı bir şeyi üç yerde anlatmasaydı sanki yeterince dehşete düşmemişim gibi), yazarın okuduğum ilk kitabı olmasından dolayı listemdeki diğer bir kitabını daha okuduktan sonra tam olarak ne hissettiğimi anlayabileceğimi söylüyor bana. bekleyip göreceğim.

This was a joy to read. Llosa has a style that means the pages just melt away as you read them, fluid and effortless, yet producing prose of an immensely high standard. It's a kind of writing which doesn't even feel like it needs to be read, you just let it wash over you like warm evening surf. Extremely good. As you might expect (or hope) from a Noel Prize winner.

The story is that of a Peruvian man named Ricardo who, in childhood, meets a girl called Lily and becomes enamoured with her. Later, as an adult, he moves to Paris and meets her again, now using a new name, and they briefly connect. What follows is decades of the same pattern. She comes into his life at times when she is experiencing hardship then, once recovered, she moves on, leaving him for a succession of other men. She marries a french diplomat. Then later moves to London (where they meet again) and is married to a British businessman with an interest in horse racing. She disappears from his life again only to show up in Japan as the mistress of a Yakuza. This last relationship traumatises her and leaves her with psychological and physical scars. But he takes her back and spends his life savings looking after her. Only to see her eventually leave him for another man once more. No matter how much he tries to move on he never can. The romance of his feelings were very compelling and convincingly conveyed (the heart wants what the heart wants).

There's a huge section of 'Of Human Bondage' where Philip keeps taking Mildred back even though she treats him horribly and this book is essentially that... but for the entire thing. Llosa's writing elevates it so it never becomes boring but there comes a point, for everyone, where you start wanting to scream at the book... 'stop taking that bitch back'!! Fortunately, for me, this only really occurred towards the very end so Llosa ultimately sold the story to me reasonably well. Despite the rinse and repeat format, the book is always engaging and entertaining, the high quality prose a major factor in that. It was only at the very end where my interest in these characters was beginning to wane slightly.

I'm not sure this one will live long in the memory, the plot was very basic and the elements and coincidences of the story were occasionally a little melodramatic, but like I said, the writing is so good that it raises the piece up to a level of immense quality. It was wonderful to read.

Review can also be found in Chill and read


“The bad Girl” is a love obsession story, between Ricardo and the woman with the thousands names, the bad girl as Ricardo calls her. They meet when Ricardo is a teenager and the hook together, even though they are not officially together. Ricardo instantly fells in love with her and this is only for a lifetime. The girl turns out to be a fraud, so she disappears as the fraud is revealed, only for the two of them to meet again, years later in Paris. Ricardo is now working as an interpreter for UNESCO and she is a revolutionary Comrade Arlette, on her way to Cuba. She refuses they ever met, but Ricardo could never forget the love of his life. Through their 40 year or so history, they meet and separate many times, yet Ricardo’s feelings never really change.

In this book, Vargas Llosa is exploring the human nature. He is going for the big love and the amount of pain a lover can tolerate, so long as the lover’s partner is reachable. It is about the amount of humiliation a man can take in, when he is madly, deeply in love with a woman, that he would actually do anything for her, even give his own life. This is a behavior not often found nowadays, yet it does raises some questions.

On the other hand, we come to read about the type of woman, that have met both huge poverty and richness and would do anything to avoid the first and gain anything she can on the second, at all costs and by all means. Would someone that never cares about other people’s feeling, ever regret for their actions?

Mario Vargas Lliosa is a Peruvian author that was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for the year 2010, “for his cartography of structures of power & his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat”.

I really enjoyed this but felt like I missed some of the nuances because I read a translated version from Spanish.

Choć historia napisana jest przepięknie, to sama w sobie była dość nudna i ostatecznie nie prowadziła donikąd. Wszyscy mówią o wyrachowanej bohaterce wodzącej za nos głównego bohatera, ale o tym jaki on był ślepy, głupi, naiwny i dawał sobą pomiatać to już cisza. Pewnie o to chodziło, żeby pokazać jak to owinęła go sobie wokół palca, ale brak jakichkolwiek przemyśleń Ricardo, jakiejkolwiek refleksji i ostatecznie zmiany po tak trudnych i bolesnych przeżyciach po prostu sprawia, że nie jest on postacią wiarygodną. A co za tym idzie - cała historia jest w mojej opinii naciągana.
Język - to mnie przy tej książce zatrzymało.