tessaays's review against another edition
2.0
Sigh, I so wanted to love this book, but it was just an absolute slog to get through. Vargas Llosa is clearly a technical master, but it felt as if he was a concert pianist trying to play someone else’s poorly composed music - you KNOW he’s incredible at what he does, but ultimately it just had no heart, and you couldn’t stay engaged. I almost gave up several times. It got better towards the end, but the first three-quarters of the plot spent all its energy on agonisingly detailed interrogation of the early socialist movement in Peru (a subject that’s ALREADY tough to get into if you’re not a historian or a specialist) and didn’t have enough plot or human interest to actually be readable. I also couldn’t get used to the perspective change between the narrator and Mayta. It’s clever and interesting (places history in the present, brings the narrator into “direct” contact with his subject, interesting temporal play, etc etc) but it’s also jarring and makes many of the early chapters near-unreadable. I had to stop and re-read a page tens of times because I couldn’t pinpoint where the perspective changed from current to historical, even when I was looking for it. I’m ok with doing some work as a reader but this was just too much, and it really ruined the experience for me. Overall - a shame. I had high expectations.
dnl83ldn's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
dapatako's review against another edition
3.0
Sebuah pengambilan antara adat dan modernitas, bertahan dan tergerus, serta tanda tanya dan mendekati jawaban. Mengangkat perihal peradaban pada definisi yang berbeda demikian praktiknya. Untuk mereka yang tidak pernah mengusik dan menjaga, ternyata menjadi objek intervensi dari mereka yang merasa unggul.
cronosmu's review against another edition
4.0
Historia de Mayta es un libro donde la ficción se imagina a sí misma. Un escritor, el mismo Vargas Llosa, busca escribir una novela acerca de un personaje que en los años cincuenta protagonizó una insurrección fallida, al borde del ridículo, que buscaba implantar el comunismo en el Perú. Ya en los años ochenta, durante el apogeo del terrorismo de Sendero Luminoso, el escritor se enfrasca en la tarea de narrar esta historia y para eso rastrea a los personajes que conocieron a Alejandro Mayta. Al mismo tiempo se va elaborando, en un plano narrativo paralelo, no la historia definitiva de este hombre y su aventura, sino la posible, y esto es así porque si los testimonios no son fiables, si la memoria es un engaño, entonces la ficción se vuelve el único medio para construir un relato verosímil, que bien puede o no ser del todo fiel a lo sucedido. Lo brillante de la novela es que es en sí misma un juego. Uno como lector puede estar siendo engañado por los dos Varguitas, el escritor y el personaje. ¿Existió Mayta? Y si existió ¿hasta qué punto coincide su vida auténtica con el retrato que el escritor hace de él? Lo mejor, sin duda, es ese último capítulo que, sin exagerar, se puede decir que es magistral.
Aunque no está entre sus novelas más trepidantes, se trata, a mi modo de ver, de una de sus obras más injustamente olvidadas. Sería una pena que todo buen lector de Vargas Llosa (y por añadidura, cualquiera que esté interesado en el tema de cómo se construye una novela) se pierda de este libro.
Aunque no está entre sus novelas más trepidantes, se trata, a mi modo de ver, de una de sus obras más injustamente olvidadas. Sería una pena que todo buen lector de Vargas Llosa (y por añadidura, cualquiera que esté interesado en el tema de cómo se construye una novela) se pierda de este libro.
leda's review against another edition
dark
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
sssnoo's review against another edition
2.0
I have had this book checked out from the library for the maximum number of renewals and finally finished it. I guess that pretty much summarizes my level of engagement in the book. It felt like a school asignment, to be honest. I learned a vast amount about the Machiguenga, a remote Amazonian people. Their culture is so unique, their myths and world order so different than mine - that was facinating. If you are interested in Anthropology and South America this book will be interesting to you I expect. But this isn’t a novel with a storyline in any traditional sense at all.
That, anyway, is what I have learned..... (to quoate the Storyteller)
That, anyway, is what I have learned..... (to quoate the Storyteller)
itsrocioo's review against another edition
1.0
1.5/5
Sometimes i hate the fact that novels like classics, books that are highly "important" or books that have won a nobel prize, i just don't like them?!?!(not all of them but mostly all) Seriously and i believe that's quite sad because i can't see the 'beauty' or 'entertainment' of this wonderful and awesome books you know?
Sometimes i hate the fact that novels like classics, books that are highly "important" or books that have won a nobel prize, i just don't like them?!?!
eleanorbrustman's review against another edition
adventurous
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
jfl's review
5.0
One theme that weaves its way through many of Vargas’ novels is the conflict between Western European culture and the indigenous cultures that have survived in Latin America and, in particular, Peru. It is the conflict, to use Domingo Sarmiento’s terms, between civilization and (from the European perspective) barbarism. In many cases it is less conflict than a lack or failure of communication and of integration between the various segments of Peruvian society. Western European, Spanish speaking culture hugs the Peruvian coast and is often more intimately linked to Europe and the United States than to Peru’s own hinterland. In contrast, a variety of indigenous cultures or groupings occupy the largely Quechua/Aymaran-speaking Andean highlands. While the native peoples of Amazonia (both those occupying the Montaña and the low-lying tropical forest) speak in other voices, including Panoan and Arawakan-rooted languages. And those cultures or socio-cultural assemblages are not only isolated from the coast but often from each other.
What complicates the disintegration, typically from the perspective of the European segment, is the failure to understand the actual complexities and, for want of a better term, the sophistication of the indigenous worlds. The Western European infused society speaks of “barbarism” when looking at the Andean Highlands and Amazonia, often failing to recognize the complex cosmologies that orient the groupings of non-European peoples.
Mario Vargas’ novels situated in Peru do span the various socio-environmental worlds of the country. And three of them expose the reader to Amazonia: La casa verde (The Green House), Pantaleon y las visitadoras (Captain Pantoja and the Special Services) and El hablador (The Storyteller). But only the latter novel deals exclusively with Amazonia and the world visions and cultural challenges of its native peoples.
Vargas’ subject is the Machiguenga, a grouping linked at least linguistically to the Ashaninka or Campa Indians, once, before Sendero Luminosa, one of the largest tribal assemblages in the Montaña. In alternating chapters (a technique he used in Aunt Julia and the Script Writer) Vargas’ narrators discuss the ethics of the national integration of the Machiguenga—presenting the various sides of integrating the Amazonia people into national Peruvian culture-- juxtaposed to the unique orientating world vision of the Machiguenga themselves, laid out in oral myths and folktales based on actual Machiguenga myths.
But beyond the theme of inter-ethnic and inter-cultural conflict, the novel is also a clear reminder that Western cosmology and organizing world visions are not the only way peoples view the world and move about in time and space. The Machiguenga are a clear case in point—as are, focusing only on Latin America, many of the other Amazonian peoples as well many of the Quechean/Aymaran-speaking cultures.
What complicates the disintegration, typically from the perspective of the European segment, is the failure to understand the actual complexities and, for want of a better term, the sophistication of the indigenous worlds. The Western European infused society speaks of “barbarism” when looking at the Andean Highlands and Amazonia, often failing to recognize the complex cosmologies that orient the groupings of non-European peoples.
Mario Vargas’ novels situated in Peru do span the various socio-environmental worlds of the country. And three of them expose the reader to Amazonia: La casa verde (The Green House), Pantaleon y las visitadoras (Captain Pantoja and the Special Services) and El hablador (The Storyteller). But only the latter novel deals exclusively with Amazonia and the world visions and cultural challenges of its native peoples.
Vargas’ subject is the Machiguenga, a grouping linked at least linguistically to the Ashaninka or Campa Indians, once, before Sendero Luminosa, one of the largest tribal assemblages in the Montaña. In alternating chapters (a technique he used in Aunt Julia and the Script Writer) Vargas’ narrators discuss the ethics of the national integration of the Machiguenga—presenting the various sides of integrating the Amazonia people into national Peruvian culture-- juxtaposed to the unique orientating world vision of the Machiguenga themselves, laid out in oral myths and folktales based on actual Machiguenga myths.
But beyond the theme of inter-ethnic and inter-cultural conflict, the novel is also a clear reminder that Western cosmology and organizing world visions are not the only way peoples view the world and move about in time and space. The Machiguenga are a clear case in point—as are, focusing only on Latin America, many of the other Amazonian peoples as well many of the Quechean/Aymaran-speaking cultures.