Customer Reviews

In Praise of the Stepmother

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For North Americans and Europeans, In Praise of the Stepmother is no doubt the best known and most controversial of all of Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa's books. Wickedly witty and fun, this is a strange and beautiful little gem and a truly masterful and original piece of erotic storytelling.

Lucrecia, newly married to Lima resident, Don Rigoberto, an older, wealthy collector of erotic paintings, suddenly finds her position jeopardized by her husband's young son, Alfonso. She honestly wants the boy to love her, but at what cost? When Fonchito's hard won affection becomes hopelessly entangled with precocious--and dangerous--desire, the fun certainly begins, but the price, we see, may prove to be all too high.

As the relationship progresses into absurdity during Don Rigoberto's all-too-often absences, Vargas Llosa provides thematic commentary in the form of selections from the Don's art collection, included as full-color reproductions of famous paintings, from the Renaissance to the present day, each accompanied by a story to which the painting is to be an illustration. As the book progresses, so does the parade of paintings, twisting and expanding the concept of erotica.

For a small book, In Praise of the Stepmother has an enormous potential to enthrall and, yes, provoke. You might wonder how anyone could have written a book as good as this one. The only answer, of course, is that it is Vargas Llosa...at his best.

Strangely enough, in South America, it is Vargas Llosa's political novels that cause controversy; in North America, it is the sexual content. The cover of this little gem, Exposure of Luxury by Bronzino, was enough to make the censors want to go to work.

Anyone who loves wickedness, fun, wit or Vargas Llosa with fall in love with this book at the drop of a...stepmother.

If you happen to have an interest in art history, believe that there is a difference between pornography and erotica, and enjoy stories with surprise endings, then this is the book for you.

On top of all of this, this is a substantial literary effort. If one appreciates beautiful prose and intelligent writing, here is a further plus.

I believe that history will prove Senor Mario Vargas Llosa to be one of the best writers of the twentieth century.

There's a tendency, in our modern, hip and cynical culture, to revere innocence as something foolish and vulnerable and always, always GOOD. In this novel, the character of Fonchito proves otherwise and returns "innocent" to its original meaning: A being utterly incapable of telling right from wrong, and therefore as capable of unthinking evil as good.

A fascinating, wonderful and deeply disturbing book.

This book has so much beauty and sheer writing virtuosity that it must stand separate and alone. Like the Chaconne, or the suites for unaccompanied cello, or Shakespeare's sonnets, this book takes your breath away.

An integral part of the narrative are the six paintings (handsome reproductions of world art by Fra Angelico and Francis Bacon, among others) which are woven as counterpoint to the storyline. Nowhere in literature does one encounter such a masterful and extraordinary melding of two art forms: it produces a delectable, erotic, and frightening little masterpiece.

It is a story of lust, love, revenge, of Eros, of sexual awakening, and of the punctilious attention to one's body parts. It can be spiritual or gross, refined or vulgar, hilarious or tragic, depending on who you are, how you look at it, and the mood you are in. Every time I have read it (five, so far) it has again shocked, and delighted and made me humble by the sheer force of its beauty. The flawless translation by Helen Lane detracts not one iota from the Spanish original. Of course you should read it.

The story of the erotic intrigue between a middle-aged woman, her husband, and her precocious stepson, "In Praise of the Stepmother" engages both the reader's carnal and intellectual mind.

Interspersed throughout the text are a series of full-color reproductions of works of graphic art--Francois Boucher's "Diana at the Bath," Titian's "Venus with Cupid and Music," and others. Vargas Llosa accompanies each of the reproductions with a fictional interpretation that serves as a counterpoint to the primary narrative of the stepmother and her household. This device allows the author to take his reader across time and space, from fantasy to horror as the erotic odyssey unfolds.

In both the main narrative and the shorter embedded fictions, Vargas Llosa both shocks and seduces the reader with his sensuous detail and psychological insights. "In Praise of the Stepmother" is a multi-media tour-de-force. A delight for lovers of erotica, classic visual art, and great literature, this book confirms in my mind Mario Vargas Llosa's stature as one of the world's great writers.

This novel is definitely "Literature"--the book is rather abstract in concept. The story partially explores others erotic pleasures from art or from assorted grooming and cleansing rituals, and another part of it is a innocence versus good. There is relatively little plot, and the characters, except for one, are sketched in very lightly. The novel is technically erotic, but most of the book is not particularly lust-inducing. (Anthony Burgess, who reviewed this for the NYTimes, claims the change from Spanish to English is to blame.)

The main narrative is interspersed with tales inspired by paintings. Full-color prints of the paintings are included. Most of these mini-stories are erotic, except for the last. The last mini-story, about Mary, helps to stimulate thought about innocence, goodness, and the character of the young boy.

Once you get past the basic premise -- sex between a 40 year old woman and a very young boy, there's nothing especially shocking, or even interesting, about this short novel.

Despite its brevity, individual scenes are described in far too much detail -- I think we get about a page and a half devoted to someone brushing his teeth, and there are similar scenes in which we learn the intricacies of trimming nose hairs, ear hairs, etc.

And while I was mildly surprised by the twist ending, I wasn't touched by it emotionally or intellectually.

To sum up, I've seldom read a book that left me feeling so uninvolved on so many levels.

Magnífica colección de pequeñas historias interrelacionadas a través de los personajes centrales: el niño, el padre y la madrastra, objetivo de las ¿candorosas? miradas y palabras del tierno infante. Vargas Llosa sabe crear un ambiente en el que cualquier detalle anecdótico se convierte en indisimulada invitación al placer menos casto, en ofrecimiento del goce sensual. Las abluciones continuas del padre son una parte más del intenso juego erótico argumental. Una extraordinaria aventura para el lector, que ha tenido su continuación con "Los cuadernos de don Rigoberto", menos lograda.

With horror and delectation I read this in the original Spanish. Little Fonchito, in love with his stepmother, is like the infant Cupid who does not realize what calamities his aphrodisiac arrows can engender. Or does he? The paintings that accompany the text are a jarring mix, from Venus at her bath, to a repulsive creature who despite a tousle of misplaced limbs and organs still manages to find a partner and get off. This book is a hold-your-breath journey through dark primal desire veiled in a lacy pink Valentine. And with the added attraction of being both sumptuous and succinct, as well as full of suspense. Titillating, encompassing, recriminating. Read it and luxuriate in guilt.

"In Praise of the Stepmother" is a thought-provoking fantasia on innocence, sex, and art which never fails to force us into questioning our most precious of assumptions. Not wishing to have our own little bourgeois moralities threatened is, I suppose, one reason why many people have dismissed this novel as "disgusting" or "immoral" or something equally nonsensical.

At its core rests a simple story. After a failed marriage with his young son Alfonso's mother, Don Rigoberto marries Dona Lucrecia, a woman whom he truly adores and is certainly erotically infatuated with. On the first page of the novel, Alfonso, a boy of ten or twelve, leaves a note on his stepmother's pillow congratulating her on her fortieth birthday, and saying that he will do his best to become first in his class to reward her. This is the inaugurating move in a cat-and-mouse game that drives the entire novel forward in a series of events that reaches its apex in a lurid sexual encounter between Alfonso and Lucrecia which occurs while Rigoberto is on a business trip. She does not deliberately set out to do this, yet still has found herself titillated by the occasional fugitive thought of her and her stepson in coitus. At the very end of the novel, we find out that Alfonso wrote an essay for school in which he details his erotic relationship with his mother and, to make matters worse, read it to his father. Why? We don't know. In the last pages of the book, the housekeeper asks Alfonso why he would do such an insidious thing to the stepmother he loved so much, to which he replies, "I did it for you," seemingly setting the entire wheel rolling toward tragedy and destruction once more.

Vargas Llosa artfully interlards the worlds of the erotic and sensual (the lovemaking of Lucrecia and Rigoberto) with Rigoberto's mundane daily ablutions - the trimming of his nose hairs, the application of cologne to his body, the special care that he gives his feet and hands. This spiritual aubade to the body, which apparently bored so many readers, is what drew me in and made turned the reading into an almost ecstatic experience. This was only heightened by the six exquisite colored plates that are placed in the novel to accentuate themes in the story.

Alfonso's duplicity (or was it duplicity after all?) asks, as Slavoj Zizek has done by other means, "Isn't love the ultimate act of violence?" After this novel, it is impossible not to see the ulterior and tenebrous underbelly of the most innocent of gestures. Whose desire is outlawed, Lucrecia's or the boy's? Can Don Rigoberto somehow turn outside that scrutiny to which he so easily applies to himself in his daily bath in order to answer what has happened under his roof? Some of these questions are never answered, but the way Vargas Llosa asks them makes reconciling one's self to the novel and its moral imperatives deliciously fun.