A review by tessaays
The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta by Mario Vargas Llosa

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.