NovelWorld

The Bad Girl has it all – delightful, lovable characters, a skillfully woven, satisfying story, swift, literate writing and the audacity of plot twists that go off like a string of firecrackers.

Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian literary master (who also ran for President of Peru in 1990, and who slugged Garcia Marquez in the eye for getting way too friendly with Mrs Vargas Llosa) is at the height of his storytelling powers, unraveling a spellbinding love story laced with plenty of comic shocks and unexpected reversals, populated by dozens of colorful supporting characters (the fat cook revolutionary, the adopted Vietnamese boy who won’t speak, the old man who communes with the ocean), and featuring two ferociously mismatched, constantly battling, star-crossed lovers to die for.

From an almost folkloric beginning in Miraflores, Peru, when the narrator at the age of fifteen first falls for the pretty, heartless new Chilean girl with the fascinating (fake) accent, each chapter moves forward in time, shifting location, deepening the characters, revealing more and more as the bad girl goes from one deception and betrayal to another.

Ricardo Somocurcio is a “good boy,” a translator and interpreter for UNESCO, and he’s head-over-heels in love with her. She’s a tricky chameleon who never tells the truth, repeatedly deceives him, cheats him, and nearly destroys him, but she has a weakness for Ricardo’s passionate professions of love, his sentimental talk from the soap operas.

Just like the bad girl herself, the novel is an irresistible seduction, a sexy tease filled with provocative clues and postponed promises. Ambitious in scope, it stretches from Cuba to Japan, with major sequences in France, England, Peru and Spain in a story that spans over thirty years.

Vargas Llosa loves his characters, loves his readers, and delights in yanking the rug out from under them again and again in a crafty plot that never goes quite where you think it will. The casually-revealed surprise that opens the last chapter alone is a head-spinner. And talk about a perfect ending – they don’t get any better! This is why we read, for sheer storytelling joy and an intimate emotional connection to the human comedy.

(and here's Gabriel Garcia Marquez with the black eye given to him by Mario Vargas Llosa)

(originally posted on Shelf-Awareness.com)