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A review by deanjean_reads
The Green House by Mario Vargas Llosa
3.0
My first exposure to Mario Vargos Llosa. Oh boy, if only somebody could have warned me what I was about to face...
The prose is a spectacular, tangled mess, as thick and tangled as the intertwined vines of the Amazon foliage. One is dragged into a single sentence of colour, violence, exotica and ruin, which one soon realizes is a plot of sorts after finishing a chapter, but the next chapter ends up being another subplot with three other different characters. After some chin scratching, several paths become more recognisable in the plots - that of Bonificia, the champs, the bandits and Father García. However, one has to search within the text to surmise who is who, or what is happening, or the chronology of the events.
I must confess that the whole book gave me a headache, but going along with the chaotic flow grants one a perverse happiness in a 'well, since the plot is already fucked, what the fuck is going to happen next?' manner. Likewise, the characters in the book experience life with extreme uncertainness but with a fierce j'oie de vivre, which I feel is most accurately described in the subplot of Fushía.
The prose is a spectacular, tangled mess, as thick and tangled as the intertwined vines of the Amazon foliage. One is dragged into a single sentence of colour, violence, exotica and ruin, which one soon realizes is a plot of sorts after finishing a chapter, but the next chapter ends up being another subplot with three other different characters. After some chin scratching, several paths become more recognisable in the plots - that of Bonificia, the champs, the bandits and Father García. However, one has to search within the text to surmise who is who, or what is happening, or the chronology of the events.
I must confess that the whole book gave me a headache, but going along with the chaotic flow grants one a perverse happiness in a 'well, since the plot is already fucked, what the fuck is going to happen next?' manner. Likewise, the characters in the book experience life with extreme uncertainness but with a fierce j'oie de vivre, which I feel is most accurately described in the subplot of Fushía.