by Mario Vargas Llosa
Paperback Edition, 602 pages
Originally published 1969
“He was like Peru, Zavalita was, he’d fucked himself up somewhere along the line. He thinks: when?”
My third book by Mario Vargas Llosa and the history lessons continue. 1950’s Peru is the focus when General Odria led a successful coup against Jose Bustamante installing his oppressive and ridiculously corrupt regime.
Two friends, who’ve lost touch over the years, encounter each other at a dog pound and decide to have a celebratory reunion drink. The first chapter is the start and end of the conversation, which lasts about 20 pages. Everything after this are the memories/flashbacks they discuss during their chat. I can only imagine they’re super-fast talkers as not much time seems to elapse between them entering and exiting the bar and yet we get two whole life stories!
The first point to mention is the writing style as they’ll be 2 or 3 conversations taking place at the same time with each sentence of dialogue alternating between the different conversations. It took me until chapter 4 to realise what was going on. I did get used to the style but it was annoying, especially as it wasn’t necessary and diminished my reading experience. This does change for part two with a more standard one section per character format being used but the craziness is re-introduced later on.
Writing style aside this is a decent novel with all of the emotional distress I’d expect from a story of a country under a Dictators rule. There’s a good spectrum of characters with the powerfully corrupt and the despairingly poor clashing with each other. Most of all this is a slice of real life during a troubling period of Peru’s history and how lives are shaped by governments.
Conversation in the Cathedral isn’t as impressive as The Feast of the Goat or War of the End of the World. At times it was addictive but for every extended period of brilliance there was a 30 page interval of annoyance, usually at the writing style but at times the story becomes scattered and confusing. If I was to read this again my rating would probably be higher as a second go would be more rewarding and the whole story would make more sense. But until that happens it’s a lower score than i anticipated.
My score – 3/5
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