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What a long, strange but wonderful trip it has been. This is the last of MVL's fiction novels that has been translated into English (I hope that Cinco Esquinas will be translated soon) and it was a great read. Back in The Green House and later in Who Killed Palmino Molero and Death in the Andes, we met Lituma, a policeman with relatively bad luck but a big soul and here again he plays a role in the tale. From In Praise of the Stepmother and The Notebooks of Don Rogoberto, we had the pleasure of meeting the erudite and sensual Rigoberto, his exceptionally sexually exuberant wife Lucretia and their brilliant and devious (not to say deviant) son (and stepson respectively) Fonchito. In The Discrete Hero, MVL weaves a page-turner with three parallel narratives involving kidnappings and extortion and hallucinations in Rigoberto's Lima and Lituma's Piura in modern day Peru. The odd chapters follow the story of trucking company owner Felicito and his mistress Mabel while the even chapters follow Rigoberto. As usual with MVL, there are moments when the past and present are interwoven to shed light via a backstory or anecdote on the narrative or on the character's personality. The themes of infidelity, poverty, and redemption are present here as in most of MVL's other novels. What is exceptional is how he brings in these characters to this particular novel and weaves such an interesting and compelling thriller which is both philosophical and insightful. Also exceptional is that there is relatively little real violence here (especially compared to the previous Lituma-based novels) and much less sex (especially compared to the Rigoberto books) but the storytelling is, as always, perfectly balanced and never rushed. Personally, I hope that we will see another story about these characters before MVL lays his pen down for good.
Highly recommended!

Fino's Mario Vargas Llosa Reviews:
Fiction
The Cubs and Other Stories (1959) TBR
The Time of the Hero (1963)
The Green House (1966)
Conversation in the Cathedral (1969)
Captain Pantoja and the Special Services (1973)
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977)
The War of the End of the World (1981)
The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta (1985)
Who Killed Palomino Molero? (1987)
The Storyteller (1989)
In Praise of the Stepmother (1990)
Death in the Andes (1996)
The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (1998)
The Feast of the Goat (2001)
The Way to Paradise (2003)
The Bad Girl (2007)
The Dream of the Celt (2010)
The Discrete Hero (2015)
The Neighborhood (2018)
Harsh Times (2021) TBR

Non-Fiction
The Perpetual Orgy (1975)
A Fish Out of Water (1993)
Letters to a Young Novelist (1998)