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The Neighborhood general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author
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Our Assessment:
B- : surprisingly flat for all the sensationalism See our review for fuller assessment.
Review Consensus: - Return to top of the page - The complete review's Review:
In summary, The Neighborhood has a promising plot: the publisher of a tabloid magazine gets his hands on some racy photographs showing one of the nation's most powerful and successful businessmen in compromising positions and, when his efforts at extortion fail, publishes them -- only to wind up murdered shortly thereafter, with the businessman then, of course, the obvious suspect in the crime.
Set in Vargas Llosa's native Peru, at the end of his nemesis Alberto Fujimori's corrupt reign, with a background of real terrorist threats and a general atmosphere of fear, suspicion, and economic inequality there's a lot of potential here for a sharp political thriller; unfortunately, Vargas Llosa realizes little of it.
The strongman in this government, the one who makes and unmakes careers, the real boss of PeruThis is 'the Doctor', the head of the Intelligence Services, Vladimiro Montesinos -- a real-life figure who did, indeed, blackmail and control media outlets. The novel zips along, shifting focus from one chapter to the next as it also introduces several other significant characters, including the other workers at Exposed, and Juan Peineta, who enjoyed a brief period of fame as an entertainer but blames Garro for everything that then went wrong in his life. Vargas Llosa here turns again to the telenovela-influenced approach that he's employed in some of his novels, with characters from different social backgrounds caught up in one big mess -- and lots of sex along the way. The penultimate chapter -- of twenty-two -- is a 'Special Edition of Exposed', which allows Vargas Llosa to recapitulate and more or less summarize the wrong-doing, and those responsible -- a rather lazy way of tying most of the story together --, while the final chapter, set a while later, is set in a calmer Peru: "It's incredible," she said. "Who could have imagined that terrorism would disappear, that Fujimori and the Doctor would be in prisonBut the chapter is still questioningly titled -- leaving open whether this will truly be a 'Happy Ending ?' The neighborhood of the title is 'Five Corners' -- "one of the most violent neighborhoods in Lima, with assaults, fights, and beatings all around" -- and this is where Garro's body is found. As it turns out, he wasn't killed there, but rather his body was dumped there -- something that then points to the actual perpetrators. But Vargas Llosa doesn't focus much energy on any sense of actual mystery -- there's little suspense about the who/how/why-dunnit here. What Vargas Llosa does invest more energy in is the sex -- from the opening chapter, in which he has Marisa and Chabela discover that there's quite a bit of pleasure to be found in each other's bodies. And while Marisa and Enrique's marriage suffers when the photographs are released, their sex life had already become rather tepid -- yet it's out of this crisis that re-learn how to get it on, hot and heavy, with one another again. Their marriage is reïnvigorated; as Enrique tells her: This damn scandal was good for this, at least. To know that I'm crazy about you. That I'm lucky enough to have married the most beautiful woman in the world. And the most delicious in bed, too.And so, while Enrique gripes about everything he has to put up with after the publication of the photographs, it comes across as being little more than a minor annoyance. Vargas Llosa treats it as a rather small inconvenience and embarrassment, with essentially no consequences. The Neighborhood appears to be Vargas Llosa's attempted reckoning with some of what he believes was (and is) wrong with Peru -- certainly the deservingly disparaged Vladimiro Montesinos, as well as the widespread fascination with gossip. It's hard not think that he takes these things a bit personally, too -- which doesn't seem to have done the novel much good, with the distance that he tries to write with here feeling forced. The Neighborhood is a novel with a decent premise and plot that putters and sputters along, sustained by Vargas Llosa's confident, easy-going writing but, ultimately, little else. It falls flat both as any sort of mystery or thriller, as well as social-political critique. It's perfectly readable -- but also kind of a dud. - M.A.Orthofer, 22 March 2018 - Return to top of the page - The Neighborhood:
- Return to top of the page - Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa was born in 1936 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010. He has written many works of fiction and non-fiction, and has run for the Presidency of Peru. - Return to top of the page -
© 2018 the complete review
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