Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Mario Vargas Llosa (3.5)
This book took a bit for me to latch onto, but as it
progressed, I found it very charming and couldn’t put it down. A
semi-autobiography written in 1977, it is the story of a young man (Mario) in
Peru going to law school and working at a local radio station. The two
characters in the title are the big influences on Mario during that time: his
divorced aunt-by-marriage and the passionate Bolivian scriptwriter brought in
to write serials for his radio station. By far, the most interesting character
in this book is Pedro, the scriptwriter. His odd proclivities (Argentinians are
horrible, man’s best age is his – 50) show up humorously in each story. The
book intersperses Mario’s life (becoming crazy as he falls in love with his
aunt) with the emotional stories of the serial. As Mario’s life runs out of
control, the scriptwriter’s stories do as well. The beauty of this book is in
the language, the creativity of the stories and the humor spattered throughout
(loved the naked stowaway with 1 tooth!). The characters are a bit cartoonish
and the serial stories can be quite confusing, but it you stick to it, the
reading experience can be quite entertaining. I found the ending brief and
relatively sad, though that did not appear to be the intention.
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