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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
wisdom of the heart, January 1, 2009
This review is from: Lima Nights (Hardcover)
The plot of this book is adequately summarized above in the publishers weekly review which accompanies its amazon listing. On paper, the plot may sound rather pedantic - older married man with cold, distant wife falls in love with beautiful younger woman, leaves wife, etc. etc.
In fact, this particular story is compelling and the telling of it is done masterfully - I couldn't put the book down. In spare prose, the author weaves a powerful story. The story is also enhanced by its romantic setting in politically unstable Peru in the 1980s, and its associated themes of racial and class conflict.
What makes this book extraordinary, however, is the author's wisdom - particularly the insights her characters impart on the mysterious workings of the human heart. The reader is left with a better understanding of love, and a greater compassion for those who make inexplicable and seemingly poor decisions because of love.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sad, but a little improbable (3.25*s), January 14, 2009
This review is from: Lima Nights (Hardcover)
This is a novel set in a time of political unrest in Lima, Peru, during the 1980s that explores an improbable and disturbing love affair between Carlos, a married man with two sons, camera salesman, and descendant from the top echelons of Peruvian society, and Maria, an exquisite, dark-skinned young woman of extreme poverty who dances in a bar, where Carlos on a men's night out is completely smitten by Maria. Carlos had not been entirely faithful during his marriage, but in this case, his obsession drives him to take chances and make stupid mistakes, resulting in his wife and children surreptitiously moving out leaving him the mansion that steadily declines over the next twenty years.
Though not formally educated, Marie, beyond her striking appearance, is appealing because of her instinctual ability to relate. But when the author resumes their story twenty years later, still living in their oversized and under furnished house, they have become distant, unable to consolidate or build upon their strong attraction. Influenced by an older female friend, Marie seeks to ward off the possibility of Carlos straying by casting a spell on him, which results in Carlos seeking the advice of a seer. Unfortunately, they unwittingly create a real rupture in their relationship where only vague dissatisfaction had existed.
It is never totally clear as to why Carlos so precipitously disrupted his and his family's lives, though it does happen, but it is even more of a mystery why after twenty years his and Marie's inability to communicate goes so far afield so quickly. We haven't been allowed to really understand these characters. Was their initial, intense rapport only illusion? There is sadness, but that is diminished somewhat by actions that don't resonant as being particularly credible or likely.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fear of intimacy, June 12, 2009
This review is from: Lima Nights (Hardcover)
LIMA NIGHTS (2009) by Marie Arana is a story about an unlikely and unlucky relationship between a forty-something German Peruvian man (white) and a Native (brown) sixteen year-old girl, who he first sees in a dance club in 1986. The story and the relationship span twenty years, to 2006. What we are given by the author is a passionate beginning and an ill-fated end. Nothing of the twenty years the couple spends together is told, and that works because it's essentially a story about sexual attraction, friendship, cultural bias, race, wealth and poverty, that persist timelessly throughout the lifespan. But mostly it's a story about communication, and how the failure to talk honestly can destroy the human bond. It's a story about how fear, anger, and jealousy can wiggle into a relationship when couples cannot express their feelings and desires openly. It's a story about how biased "friends" and stereotypes can undermine a relationship. It's a story about how psychiatry and shamanism--disparate ways of trying to understand and influence what is going on between couples--can both do harm without honest disclosure. It's a story about fear of intimacy. What I took away from this well told tale was a sense of sadness--that attraction is not enough, obligation is not enough, even money is not enough. It was intriguing, honest, unsentimental, and well written. It is a refreshing change from a lot of what is being published and touted today (Happy ending Chick-lit, Boy-lit, Men's fiction, & Women's fiction). There are no heroes, no villains, no anti-heroes, or anti-villains, just an honest, reality based story of two people--their beginning and their end. Five stars.
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