Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter

I just came across this review that I wrote some time ago, and no it is not Christmas yet but I will post the review lest I forget about it again:


What's really nice about Christmas vacation is that you can really slow down in that blessed period between Christmas and New Year and enjoy a good book. This year for me it's a discovery: a novel called "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter" by Mario Vargas Llosa. I did not really know Latin American literature beyond Gabriel Marcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa is a revelation.

I knew of him of course as the loser in the presidential race of Peru against Alberto Fujimori. It  is a pleasure to discover a writer and a work that resonates at so many levels.

While it is not obvious at first, the novel is about madness: the madness of art and the madness of love. The narrator relates events from his youth. They involve two main narratives: the love story between the narrator and an older woman "Aunt (actually only related by marriage)" Julia; and the role of a radio serial scriptwriter whose characters spring to life in intervening chapters. The action get more and more crazy and more and more picaresque until it is hard to tell which is crazier: the attempt of the real-life lovers to get married or the completely fantastic happenings of the make-believe characters whose creator ends up in an asylum.

The action takes place in Lima, Peru, a universe that is remote and yet familiar to this reader, Unlike the seemingly classless society of American novels, here is a heavily stratified society governed by tradition, religion and family. Something oddly similar to old Saigon, especially its plethora of aunts and uncles who seem to be everywhere, reminiscent of the innumerable tontons and tatas whose existence and opinions  sometimes forces one into an invisible carcan of conformity. The effect of the love story between the narrator and the Aunt lends a delicious sense of irreverance to the whole proceedings.

Parallel to that, the several stories spun out by the scriptwriter seem to coil end enmesh themselves into more and more fantastic tales, subtly reminiscent of the Arabian Tales. In the main narrative we are led to believe that these are serials over the radio that were the most popular in Peru ever. Something like Nous Deux meets Fellini. It is easy to believe that as the reader is really taken in by this whole set of fantastic tales. There are touches of magical realism or maybe surrealism. There are incest, a priest whose ideas scandalize the hierarchy, a rapist who goes for old ladies, a Lolita, a legendary singer in love with  a carmelite, carnivorous rats, social decline, disastrous soccer matches, earthquake, and love.

Love that transcends all: age, class, destiny. Love of persons and love of art, which can transcend a prosaic profession of small time actors and produce artist.

All of which leave a reader with a numbness similar to what happens after a roller coaster ride. You can't really describe what happened but it has been a hell of a ride, and a lot of fun. It also helps that the author keeps peppering the text with reference to the fifties (of age) as the peak period of one's life.


Highly recommended read.