Book Tamers| book reviews

At this point, my idea of rashness evolves around one single thought: should I go to Prague and watch the rain from Cafe Arco, the place where Kafka read from The Process to his friends or should I taste a delicious croissant croustillant at Les Deux Magots? If that’s not possible, please let me walk on Nevski Prospekt during the white nights …

On the fourth cover of the book, I read in bewilderment that this is the first romance that Llosa wrote. At 70. Love… I would probably say that it is more like an obsession, that deviant behavior that makes us, in a perverted way, to become emotionally attached to people who hurt us most.

The bad bad girl

Maybe the reason why I’m so suspicious about this novel is because everything is baldly told. Or too abruptly. The reader is “told” everything, can’t imagine things, can’t perceive essential things about the characters. That’s why even the hero is not very consistent. The woman (we find out her real name only later) runs a chameleon-like existence, which leads imagination to the “mean reds” girl, Holly Golightly. She is a master of disguise, she adjusts very easily to each and every environment in which she needs to survive, being an insensitive self-seeker, restless and proving immature behavior. Maybe just in the end, when she becomes physically challenged, when it is impossible for her to be mean anymore, she cools down.

During four decades, the narrator pursues this complicated story of love for an unstable little woman, always on the run. This rash girl continuously appears in the life of the short translator, who desperately loves her and who wails that she is the reason why he cannot lead a normal life. Emphasizing the moments where the two of them are together (hazardous meetings for her and due to fate for him), the story’s background is rendered by Lima, Paris, London and Tokyo. In Peru, the mean girl is still forming her personality, in Paris she is very charming and mysterious, in England a true lady, while in Japan she becomes really cruel, going from naivety to a fierce perversion of both her body and soul.

The good boy

The narrator, who actually leads an interesting life with his job as an UNESCO translator, with missions in different countries which give him the chance to live his childhood dream (that of living in Paris), violently scorns himself when he finds out that “his girl” has left again. A man who is actually strong, with a great concentration capacity and who gathers around him people as interesting as he is (the atypical hippie, Barreto, or the lead soldiers collector, Toledano). The life of this “good boy” is arid because he doesn’t really manage to fit in, in opposition with the woman of his life who feels everywhere like home. His passions, the movies, the plays, disks, translations from Russian classics, the persevering work or the political life of those times (as agitated in Europe as in Latin America) are silenced by the volcano represented by this woman who always manages to ruin him, both physically and morally.

The speech is to be noted, their conversations always start in the same way, she wants to hear sweet things from his mouth and he wishes to marry her in order to consume the bourgeois lifestyle that he was meant for. One thing is for sure: the American movies lied: “the good boy ” and “the bad girl ” can’t live together because they are driven by selfishness, immaturity and a languor that can’t be understood, who makes them unable to set things clear.

Written by: Ioana

Time traveler’s wife is an atypical love story between a librarian (Henry), who suffers from a genetic disorder that makes him travel through time and his wife (Clare), constrained to get used to his sudden leaves and long absences. Henry can’t control the moment of his leaving and has no idea when he will be back. Thus, in order to keep his calm, he runs.

Clare waiting for Henry - Henry waiting for time

When travelling, Henry can’t take anything with him. Thus, he awakes bare naked and starving as he finds himself in the need of learning various tricks in order to get food and clothes. He learns all these tricks from his elder self. Clare is a catholic artist who practically has known Henry all her life although they met in reality only at an adult age. The relationship between the two can seem in the beginning rather crazy, almost like a joke. Henry’s departures are in no way a warranty of the marital lastingness. Waiting is one of the central ideas of this novel. Both characters wait for something to happen: Clare, like a modern Penelope, spends her time dreaming of her time-travelling husband, while Henry craves for a treatment, a confirmation that his disease has a cure. The latter’s wish to live like a normal human being makes him able to support a family from which he is absent most of the time.

Unlimited love

A series of misfortunate accidents arises from Clare’s need to love somebody who would stay by her side, a glimpse from Henry that he would not desert her, an insurance in case of fire, of flooding or divine will.
Told from both points of view, the story reveals the effects of time travelling on unconditional love between the two and on their marriage. The characters do not reveal themselves gradually because there is no proper chronology of the events. Also, the discussions between teenage Clare and an older Henry are almost improbable. Moreover, the love feeling is said rather than being suggested and facts are depicted mechanically. The indisputable charm of the novel is given by the characters’ faith that they are meant for each other, that love is above any kind of limitations and even above death.

Written by Ioana