mango246's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
blueyorkie's review against another edition
5.0
This masterpiece by Vargas Llosa, with its rhythmic and polyphonic writing, weaves a silk fabric with tangled literary threads: the scripts like the characters multiply, the linearity of the story dislocated, everything duplicates, is rejected and intersects in a cathedral which is not one, but a lounge where Zavalita, the hero, talks with the former driver of his father, met by chance, sweeping ten years of their life as of the social and political history of Peru in the era of dictatorship.
Vargas Llosa piled up temporal breaks and perspectives by disrupting dialogues, thoughts and identities: these discursive changes paint a puzzle of characters whose approaches multiply, like the Cubists. This brilliantly carried out process makes it possible to unmask souls, situations, and relationships. Innocence, complicity, repression, mediocrity, corruption, manipulation, and good conscience collide, and deceptive appearances withdraw in a constant quest for oneself and the world, with a masterful description of Peru by the inexcusable General Manuel Odría.
Vargas Llosa piled up temporal breaks and perspectives by disrupting dialogues, thoughts and identities: these discursive changes paint a puzzle of characters whose approaches multiply, like the Cubists. This brilliantly carried out process makes it possible to unmask souls, situations, and relationships. Innocence, complicity, repression, mediocrity, corruption, manipulation, and good conscience collide, and deceptive appearances withdraw in a constant quest for oneself and the world, with a masterful description of Peru by the inexcusable General Manuel Odría.
jfl's review against another edition
5.0
I first heard about Conversacion en la catedral in 1969 when it was published by Sex Barril. I was living in Spain at the time and it was one of the books most talked about at the annual Spanish book fair. By 1969 Franco’s dictatorship was in its final stages (Franco died in 1975) and, although restricted freedoms and censorship still overlaid the country, there were signs of greater openness to a more progressive democracy. One sign of that openness was a wave of books whose themes gnawed away at the roots of the Falangist State.
Vargas’ novel emerged the reader in the so-called Ocenio---the 11 years in Peru of the dictatorship of Manual Odria, from 1950 to 1960. Vargas exposed the pernicious impact of that dictatorship on socio-political life in Peru. But the Spanish public—particularly the youth in the academic community—devoured the novel as a commentary on Spain, as a commentary on the perniciousness of Franco’s brand of oppression.
In spite of the buzz around the book during the Feria, I only picked up the flyer that the publisher was distributing. I was working on another project and, while I was planning to travel to Peru the following year, reading Vargas’ novel was low priority. It remained unread by me for 30 years, although it was one of the Latin American novels that haunted me whenever I ran across Vargas’ name. When I finally did read it—40 years after Franco’s death and well into Spain’s democratic years—I was as impressed as much with its structural creativity as with its condemnation of political authoritarianism.
The novel unfolds as a long session of remembrances between two men in a Lima dive bar named La Catedral: Santiago Zavala (30 years old) and Ambrosio Pardo (well-past 40). It is a chronological and geographical intertwining or, as one critic wrote, “braiding” of stories recounted by the two men of their lives and relationships during that 11-year period, revealing in the telling the corruption and tensions between and among the country’s varied social and political classes. The structure contributes significantly to the tension and immediacy which Vargas fosters in the work.
Vargas’ novel emerged the reader in the so-called Ocenio---the 11 years in Peru of the dictatorship of Manual Odria, from 1950 to 1960. Vargas exposed the pernicious impact of that dictatorship on socio-political life in Peru. But the Spanish public—particularly the youth in the academic community—devoured the novel as a commentary on Spain, as a commentary on the perniciousness of Franco’s brand of oppression.
In spite of the buzz around the book during the Feria, I only picked up the flyer that the publisher was distributing. I was working on another project and, while I was planning to travel to Peru the following year, reading Vargas’ novel was low priority. It remained unread by me for 30 years, although it was one of the Latin American novels that haunted me whenever I ran across Vargas’ name. When I finally did read it—40 years after Franco’s death and well into Spain’s democratic years—I was as impressed as much with its structural creativity as with its condemnation of political authoritarianism.
The novel unfolds as a long session of remembrances between two men in a Lima dive bar named La Catedral: Santiago Zavala (30 years old) and Ambrosio Pardo (well-past 40). It is a chronological and geographical intertwining or, as one critic wrote, “braiding” of stories recounted by the two men of their lives and relationships during that 11-year period, revealing in the telling the corruption and tensions between and among the country’s varied social and political classes. The structure contributes significantly to the tension and immediacy which Vargas fosters in the work.
m_m_tucker's review against another edition
4.5
Really good. Structure was difficult at first and became enjoyable. More knowledge on Peruvian politics may have been helpful.
anaceciliaav's review against another edition
3.0
Acho que pelo momento que eu li (sem muito entusiasmo) não consegui aproveitar a história e nuances do livro que é bastante complexo, desde da forma como o autor escreve, misturando momentos e os diálogos entre os personagens, desde a narrativa em si do contexto social e político do Peru.
Talvez por falta de atenção também não consegui desenhar uma “árvore genealógica” dos personagens (lê-se: existem muitos nomes ao longo do livro e durante a leitura eu fiquei me perguntando, quem é essa pessoa e pq ela tá aqui?).
Achei os personagens principais, Ambrosio e Zavalita, um tanto quanto antipáticos (apesar de também achar o núcleo de Zavalita mais interessante e fácil de acompanhar do que o de Ambrosio), mas entende-se que não existia muito entusiasmo em viver no Peru na década de 50, o livro me passa um Peru num grande marasmo nesse período.
3 estrelas por estar me fazendo ler mais sobre ditadura e a construção urbanística no Peru, os bairros e praças que o livro se passa mostram o “background” dos personagens e achei extremamente interessante que o Popeye (formado em arquitetura) se conecta à política de Belaúnde, também arquiteto e futuro presidente, que criou uma revista nacional para arquitetura e urbanismo (El arquitecto peruano) com o intuito de solucionar os problemas de habitação e de planejamento das cidades peruanas.
Talvez por falta de atenção também não consegui desenhar uma “árvore genealógica” dos personagens (lê-se: existem muitos nomes ao longo do livro e durante a leitura eu fiquei me perguntando, quem é essa pessoa e pq ela tá aqui?).
Achei os personagens principais, Ambrosio e Zavalita, um tanto quanto antipáticos (apesar de também achar o núcleo de Zavalita mais interessante e fácil de acompanhar do que o de Ambrosio), mas entende-se que não existia muito entusiasmo em viver no Peru na década de 50, o livro me passa um Peru num grande marasmo nesse período.
3 estrelas por estar me fazendo ler mais sobre ditadura e a construção urbanística no Peru, os bairros e praças que o livro se passa mostram o “background” dos personagens e achei extremamente interessante que o Popeye (formado em arquitetura) se conecta à política de Belaúnde, também arquiteto e futuro presidente, que criou uma revista nacional para arquitetura e urbanismo (El arquitecto peruano) com o intuito de solucionar os problemas de habitação e de planejamento das cidades peruanas.
lereader's review against another edition
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.5
blackoxford's review against another edition
5.0
Bumbling Towards Hell
None of us is ever prepared for what is happening in our lives; nor are the choices presented to us - political, personal, spiritual - ones that we formulate. We move randomly, provoked by half-formed dreams and aspirations; but it simply isn’t possible to foresee the consequences of each move. So we react, with even less reason than immediate desire, to circumstances as they unfold. We call the result a life, or career, or accomplishment, but it is really only a series of unplanned revolutions in our experience, our preferences, our prejudices, our politics and the way in which we harm other people. Thus one of Vargas Llosa’s main characters can say. “People change here... never things.”
The Peru of Vargas Llosa is perhaps exceptional in this regard. It is a place of ingrained racial tension - among the Spanish, the Mountain Indians, the Jungle Indians, the Blacks, the mixed race untouchables - which insures that no politics can be stable. Consequently everyone is “... in revolt against his skin, against his class, against himself, against Peru.” It is a place of domination by the Catholic Church through which personal advancement is controlled. It is a place of profoundly respected, and expected, machismo in which women have no voice and are presumed to submit in everything from sex to financial dependence. It is not therefore a happy place in which to seek one’s future. Everyone is disappointed, especially those who achieve what they believed they wanted. And revolution is more or less a way of life - personally as well as politically.
The eponymous conversations take place in a bar, a working man's dive in Lima called the Cathedral. They tell the history of a group of boyhood friends and their families as well as that of Peru. This is a history of haplessness and failed dreams - about love, about vocation, about familial loyalty, about doing the right thing - largely because each dream interferes with the others. Love confronts loyalty and leads to a politics of hate; pursuing one’s calling demands giving up whatever doing the right thing means. Dreams become nothing more than a residue of regret and fragmented, sentimental memories. As one character describes another, “You seem to have stopped living when you were eighteen years old.”
The literary technique of cutting abruptly from the personal conversation to the national history - and frequently inter-leaving up to four other conversations - can be disconcerting initially but as it becomes familiar it serves to amplify the ironies of the situation to the point of desperate sarcasm. The conflicts and incompatibilities of needs, wants, emotions become stark and obvious. As do the various forms of complicity in coercion and torture in contemporary Peruvian society.
Otherwise relatively innocuous people are drawn into a web of systematic oppression of their compatriots. The life-choice seems limited to being either oppressed or oppressor. A neutral position doesn’t exist. “Doubts were fatal,” A young idealist says, “...they paralyze you and you can’t do anything, ...[S]pending your life digging around, would that be right? torturing yourself, would that be a lie? instead of acting?” But acting, even with good intentions, means acting against others, “And in this country a person who doesn’t fuck himself up fucks up other people.” Tyrants or reformers, it doesn’t matter; all act the same with power. Power isn’t simply correlated with evil; power is the evil which is everywhere and nowhere. It transforms those who merely seek it into carriers of a morbid infection.
Unsurprisingly nothing goes the way it should for anyone, neither for those in charge nor those oppressed by those in charge. No one is reliable, even oneself; everyone evolves into a parasite on their family, friends, associates, and their own past. A transcendent demonic presence seems to infect the entire country. Indeed, the people change but things never do. This is normality in Vargas Llosa’s Peru, a profoundly hopeless normality about which nothing can be done. Santiago, the protagonist, is obsessed by the mysterious force behind his and everyone else’s failure: “All the doors open, he thinks, at what moment and why did they begin to close?”
Ambrosio, the black chauffeur of Santiago’s family, is a Horatio-like interlocutor in conversation with Santiago as Hamlet. They each reveal the facts that the other never knew about both their families’ roles in the country’s continuing misery. Santiago can only drop more deeply into despair and spiritual ennui; he is traumatized: “My whole life spent doing things without believing, my whole life spent pretending....And my whole life spent wanting to believe in something, ... And my whole life a lie, I don’t believe in anything... APRA [the Leftist Party] is the solution, religion is the solution, Communism is the solution, and believing it. Then life would become organized all by itself and you wouldn’t feel empty anymore.” Looking to fill a spiritual, social and political flaw with anything at hand seemed the only strategy.
Echoes of Trump’s America or Berlusconi’s Italy or Erdogan’s Turkey or Putin’s Russia? The political sensibilities of Vargas Llosa’s Peru seem to have become a worldwide phenomenon. Racism, unarticulated class warfare, the cooperation of religion in the service of power, seem to be the coming norms. It is difficult not to adopt Santiago’s mood of despair. Religious belief cannot create solidarity; neither can global consumerism. When did all the doors begin to close and why? Can they ever be opened again?
None of us is ever prepared for what is happening in our lives; nor are the choices presented to us - political, personal, spiritual - ones that we formulate. We move randomly, provoked by half-formed dreams and aspirations; but it simply isn’t possible to foresee the consequences of each move. So we react, with even less reason than immediate desire, to circumstances as they unfold. We call the result a life, or career, or accomplishment, but it is really only a series of unplanned revolutions in our experience, our preferences, our prejudices, our politics and the way in which we harm other people. Thus one of Vargas Llosa’s main characters can say. “People change here... never things.”
The Peru of Vargas Llosa is perhaps exceptional in this regard. It is a place of ingrained racial tension - among the Spanish, the Mountain Indians, the Jungle Indians, the Blacks, the mixed race untouchables - which insures that no politics can be stable. Consequently everyone is “... in revolt against his skin, against his class, against himself, against Peru.” It is a place of domination by the Catholic Church through which personal advancement is controlled. It is a place of profoundly respected, and expected, machismo in which women have no voice and are presumed to submit in everything from sex to financial dependence. It is not therefore a happy place in which to seek one’s future. Everyone is disappointed, especially those who achieve what they believed they wanted. And revolution is more or less a way of life - personally as well as politically.
The eponymous conversations take place in a bar, a working man's dive in Lima called the Cathedral. They tell the history of a group of boyhood friends and their families as well as that of Peru. This is a history of haplessness and failed dreams - about love, about vocation, about familial loyalty, about doing the right thing - largely because each dream interferes with the others. Love confronts loyalty and leads to a politics of hate; pursuing one’s calling demands giving up whatever doing the right thing means. Dreams become nothing more than a residue of regret and fragmented, sentimental memories. As one character describes another, “You seem to have stopped living when you were eighteen years old.”
The literary technique of cutting abruptly from the personal conversation to the national history - and frequently inter-leaving up to four other conversations - can be disconcerting initially but as it becomes familiar it serves to amplify the ironies of the situation to the point of desperate sarcasm. The conflicts and incompatibilities of needs, wants, emotions become stark and obvious. As do the various forms of complicity in coercion and torture in contemporary Peruvian society.
Otherwise relatively innocuous people are drawn into a web of systematic oppression of their compatriots. The life-choice seems limited to being either oppressed or oppressor. A neutral position doesn’t exist. “Doubts were fatal,” A young idealist says, “...they paralyze you and you can’t do anything, ...[S]pending your life digging around, would that be right? torturing yourself, would that be a lie? instead of acting?” But acting, even with good intentions, means acting against others, “And in this country a person who doesn’t fuck himself up fucks up other people.” Tyrants or reformers, it doesn’t matter; all act the same with power. Power isn’t simply correlated with evil; power is the evil which is everywhere and nowhere. It transforms those who merely seek it into carriers of a morbid infection.
Unsurprisingly nothing goes the way it should for anyone, neither for those in charge nor those oppressed by those in charge. No one is reliable, even oneself; everyone evolves into a parasite on their family, friends, associates, and their own past. A transcendent demonic presence seems to infect the entire country. Indeed, the people change but things never do. This is normality in Vargas Llosa’s Peru, a profoundly hopeless normality about which nothing can be done. Santiago, the protagonist, is obsessed by the mysterious force behind his and everyone else’s failure: “All the doors open, he thinks, at what moment and why did they begin to close?”
Ambrosio, the black chauffeur of Santiago’s family, is a Horatio-like interlocutor in conversation with Santiago as Hamlet. They each reveal the facts that the other never knew about both their families’ roles in the country’s continuing misery. Santiago can only drop more deeply into despair and spiritual ennui; he is traumatized: “My whole life spent doing things without believing, my whole life spent pretending....And my whole life spent wanting to believe in something, ... And my whole life a lie, I don’t believe in anything... APRA [the Leftist Party] is the solution, religion is the solution, Communism is the solution, and believing it. Then life would become organized all by itself and you wouldn’t feel empty anymore.” Looking to fill a spiritual, social and political flaw with anything at hand seemed the only strategy.
Echoes of Trump’s America or Berlusconi’s Italy or Erdogan’s Turkey or Putin’s Russia? The political sensibilities of Vargas Llosa’s Peru seem to have become a worldwide phenomenon. Racism, unarticulated class warfare, the cooperation of religion in the service of power, seem to be the coming norms. It is difficult not to adopt Santiago’s mood of despair. Religious belief cannot create solidarity; neither can global consumerism. When did all the doors begin to close and why? Can they ever be opened again?
patricia586's review against another edition
3.0
aunque yo se que MArio Vargas Llosa escribe bien, este no me gusto tanto. No se si fue porque en todo en libro se redacta tal y como hablan los peruanos... muy bien por ellos, pero la verdad a veces las ideas se me perdian.
jnepal's review against another edition
3.0
The writing itself is very good, the story (and how it’s told) is more problematic for me.
Probably won’t be reading this again.
Probably won’t be reading this again.