Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter: A Novel

If it weren't for wanting to know the outcome of an 18 year-old writer's pursuit of a divorcee 14 years his senior, reading Mario Vargas Llosa's  Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter: A Novel  would be a challenge to finish. Then again, one could skip almost every other chapter told from a third person point of view and, instead, read those chapters told in the voice of Llosa's love-struck protagonist, the author's namesake.To do so, however, one might miss the point of Llosa's novel - that infatuation, like obsession, brings erratic thinking and behavior. If a reader should dismiss the inappropriateness or insanity of the affair between the young lover and his conquest, the third person narratives reinforce Llosa's theme like a slap given to someone making no sense.Llosa's intention with the third person narratives is not so obvious in the first instance, a story about a concerned doctor who discovers a horrible truth about a brother and sister on a wedding day. It is also not apparent how the third person narratives relate to the main story until a few more chapters pass and, through "Mario's" voice, a reader learns their purpose; the third person narratives are actually soap operas written by an eccentric scriptwriter and aired from a radio station where "Marito," as "Aunt Julia" calls him, works.Enjoyable to read at first, or hear from the perspective of "Mario's" relatives, the workaholic "scriptwriter's" soap operas explore characters with their own neuroses. Unfortunately, both readers and "listeners" have to suffer through bad writing that is eventually explained as the "scriptwriter's" work. Whenever I neared the completion of some of "Mario's" first person accounts, I cringed, anticipating the "soap opera" chapters, roughly 30 pages long and with sentence structures so complex and convoluted that I wanted to skip them. Because "Mario's" relatives provided commentary on the quality of the radio soap opera, I continued reading them as characters once killed off returned to life or have their backgrounds altered or confused with other characters.But most compelling is "Mario's" journey to claim the eye of his affection. The situation prevents disinterest in the novel as "Mario" tries to keep his affair on the down low and then, once found out, contends with his Catholic family members' reactions, which provide some of the novel's humor. Whether one chooses to skip chapters or read "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter" from cover to cover, one thing is certain to be felt: anticipation of what happens next.

Happy Hour! Mario Vargas Llosa (former Peruvian presidential candidate and prolific novelist) gives us two for the price of one: a coming of age story in the form of a memoir (the 18 y old Marito (who hates being called by that name) works as a radio journalist and has an affair with the 32 y old divorced sister of the wife of an uncle; MVL actually married the woman in real life and she later published her counter-version (titled `What Varguitas didn't tell')), plus a bunch of soap texts written by a radio colleague. That does not at first glance sound like a `must read', but it is quite entertaining. It was filmed in the US under the name Tune in Tomorrow, with Keanu Reeves; the film moved the story from Lima to New Orleans. The book is set in Lima during the 50s (Korean War as point of reference), it first appeared in Spanish in 1977, the film is from 1990.The memoir and the soap chapters are intermittent; the memoir begins to look more and more like the ever more disorderly scripts by the confused colleague. The soap stories play a part in real life and of course real life comes into the soaps, and `real life' of the novel gets mixed up with real life in, well, real life. Much of the fun comes from international animosities in the Latino world: the script writer is Bolivian; he assumes the worst about Peruvians, he hates Argentines (to the point of diplomatic complications), is jealous of Cubans and Chileans. This is all generally in the spirit of good-natured banter, not poisonous. Well, more or less.I have never followed any of the productions of the soap industry, not in radio, nor in TV, but I begin to suspect that I missed a treat. Camacho's heroes are mostly male over 50 and in fantastic shape (expressing the writer's longing for eternal youth), though they have increasingly odd habits too. They have the most outrageous adventures, full of tempestuous passions. Sometimes borders between stories melt. With time, Pedro has trouble remembering which name belongs to which character and which series. He never keeps his texts, so he can't check it up. Finally he needs to kill them off to clean up his slate. It becomes a virtual herocide, and all extras are thrown into the bargain. A house collapses in an earthquake, a police station gets burned down by thugs, a ship sinks with all on board, stampeding masses in a football stadium are out of control...It begins so conventionally and then becomes more and more outlandish:A surgeon discovers at his niece's wedding that she is pregnant from her brother.A police sergeant picks up an African illegal immigrant in the port area and is ordered by his superiors to kill the man and drop the body in a garbage dump.A judge investigates a rape case, interrogating a Jehovah's Witness as a suspect, and the 13 year old victim, who turns out to be a nymphet in the Lolita sense.A fanatic rodent exterminator and family tyrant unexpectedly meets rebellion in his family.A female (the exception) psychoanalyst cures an insomniac's problem by making him hate children so that he stops having nightmares of the accident that he had.A peaceful guest at a boarding house goes insane, tries to kill the owner and rape his crippled wife; later he escapes from the asylum.A slum priest revolutionizes life by training criminals and prostitutes to do their jobs better, but fails with the introduction of a communal life style. (My review title is the doctor thesis project that the Church had not accepted, surprisingly.)An alcoholic football referee gets to judge the South American Champions final (oddly between a Peruvian and a Bolivian team, highly unusual), which ends in wholesale slaughter.We never get the endings of these weird suspense stories, they all stop with cliffhangers, until books are closed in the mass murder wrap-ups.Pedro Camacho writes every half hour episode in not more than one hour, he is phenomenally productive. No writer's block for Don Pedro! He lives like a pauper but has a huge fan base. His miserable living standard and the contrast to the man's apparent success as a writer should teach MVL a lesson, but it doesn't. Mario is sure he will become a writer, and is equally appalled and frightened by Pedro's work style.The novel is light-handed fun in the sense of `sheer madness'. If I want to find fault, I would say it is about 100 pages too long. Consider a half star deducted.

I enjoy the book more as I think about it than I did as when I read it. It's a fine read but the collapse at the last chapter is disappointing. I wonder if Mario may have gone thru something significant in his personal real life that interrupted him towards the end of his writing the book. I'm imagined many great paths and opportunities to finish the book. Perhaps someone should initiate a contest to write alternate endingI've been to Peru and found some of the glimpses of life in Peru interesting, reminded me of the complexity and diversity I saw.I found myself talking about the book a bit but I have not decided yet if I would recommend to anyone.

Set back in the day before television was introduced to Peru, we follow the life of student, Marito, as he works at Panamerica, writing up news scripts for the radio station and studies for his law exams. His life is disrupted by the arrival of his Aunt Julia with whom he embarks on a secret affair, and Pedro Camacho, a popular Bolivian radio soap opera scriptwriter.Alternating between chapters in Marito's life are Pedro's increasingly hilarious and bizarre soap opera segments. As Marito and Aunt Julia's love affair gradually progresses into something neither had expected, so does Marito's relationship with Pedro, building from mere colleagues to confidantes. Pedro's radio soap operas hold the listeners glued to their radios at various times during the day.It took me a little while before I realized that certain chapters I'd thought to be part of Marito's story were soap opera stories, complete with the requisite cliffhangers.I think this is one of the author's more entertaining book.

Radio news editor Mario, 18, falls in love with Aunt Julia, 32. It’s an affair of passionate intensity - and one that has to be kept secret to prevent a family scandal. Mario’s a budding author and becomes friendly with Pedro Camacho, a hugely successful writer of radio drama. Camacho’s elaborate melodramas are interwoven into the central narrative about Mario’s love affair. In the meantime we learn a lot about life in Lima, in all its many forms: this is a boisterous, at times hilarious, novel. Llosa echoes Kingsley Amis in his comic brutality and waspishness. But this is, at heart, a story about love and friendship, and a compelling one. It became more addictive as it progressed; by the halfway mark, I was hooked - and the closing sections are tense and dramatic. The Camacho sections are hilarious, though at times I wanted them to end so we could get back to the main story. But they do make for a more textured and varied narrative that shines a spotlight on many different aspects of Peruvian life and culture.

A very entertaining novel particularly as I read it whilst in Peru and it captured the period and place very evocatively. The narrative voice was well sustained and the progress of the story was intriguing. Somed engaging characters. Gradually theplot takes place and we begin to guess what's happening. Then, towards the end the author seems to tire of it. There were so many possibilities for a clever ending but he just shuts it down and leaves several characters stranded in a rather uncompleted way.

Arrived on time and great price

Excellent novel. Set in Peru, in the 1950s. Aunt Julia, is a character. Her nephew, is the postmodern narrator.

This is a great book - a very enjoyable read