Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter

Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa is regularly reviewed in the Barn without seemingly having a big fan club here. On the basis of Aunt Julia I won't be counting myself as a fan either.

It's cleverly structured and some of the comedy is moderately funny but it didn't do enough to justify its massive reputation. In fact, as I crawled through to the end, gradually reading slower and slower, the structure itself became part of the problem.

The novel's dedication is to Julia Urquidi Illanes and its first person narrator is Mario (you're thinking "hang on, let me get this straight ..." but I'll came back to this point). Mario is a bright eighteen-year-old law student working for a radio station in Lima when two interesting characters enter his life. The first is his Aunt Julia, 32 years old, with whom he begins a rather playful affair. The second is the radio station's new script-writer, Pedro Camacho, whose soap operas quickly send the station's audience figures into orbit. Chapters describing the increasingly problematic romance between the two lovers (it's hard to decide which is more transgressive in 1950s Peru, the difference in age or the family connection) are interspersed with little episodes and scenes from Pedro Camacho's many soap operas.

Of course, Mario and Julia's affair is a soap opera of its own, especially when their family discovers the romance and the two lovers are involved in secret meetings, forged marriage documents and dramatic chases across Peru. Meanwhile, Camacho's soap operas become more and more bizarre with characters crossing from one soap opera to another, dying and coming back to life etc. Trouble is, towards the end I wanted to hear more about Mario and Julia (though, come to think of it, not much more) and an awful lot less, zero in fact, about Camacho's soap heroes.

Actually, the most interesting aspect of this book is its biographical element. It turns out Vargas Llosa really did marry his aunt. Not only did he eventually dedicate the book (which came out after the eight-year marriage had already ended) to her but he also sent her a signed first copy. According to Vargas Llosa it was only at that point their happily divorced relationship went a bit sour. Julia subsequently produced her own book entitled "What Mario Didn't Say". Assuming, of course, that clever clogs Mario hasn't also made all that up (and penned the Julia book himself, aswell) to have some sport with his readers, that _does_ sound like an interesting book.