The World's Literature in Europe discussion

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter /Mario Vargas Llosa takes place in 1950's Lima, Peru. Two plots run in tandem. One of them is the courtship by a nineteen year old law student and radio news writer Marito with his uncle's sister-in-law, divorcée Aunt Julia, a character based on Vargas Llosa's first-wife Julia Urquidi Illanes. The other plot is the career of radio soap serials writer, director, and actor Pedro Camacho, possibly the real-life Raul Salmon http://www.pateplumaradio.com/south/b... . This is a funny, autobiographical novel about making Peruvian radio soap operas and news reports before television's rise.

Chapter 2 abruptly changes the characters to Dr. Alberto de Quinteros, a Lima physician with a fox terrier named Puck. Quinteros enjoys science, family and gymnasium. Indeed, the setting occurs during a sweaty, exhausting gym workout surrounded by his surfing nephew Richard, the instructor Coco, and two weight-lifting addicts Blacky Humilla and Polly Sarmiento. While Coco shouts insults to encourage feats of strength, Quinteros' thoughts are about his niece Elianita's wedding later that day to Red Antúnez, Richard's erratic behavior at the gym, his daughter Charo's inexplicable engagement to Tato Soldervilla, and his brother and sister-in-law's fine family.

Scratch what I implied above about Dr Quinteros' perfect family in Chapter 2. I won't give away the elaborate wedding of a multitude, but the family has its secret troubles.

In Chapter 3, Vargas Llosa turns back to the narrator Mario of Radio Panamericana, who misses some commitments due to his getting to know the eccentric Bolivian Pedro Camacho of Radio Central and his forgetting the passing time. One of these missed events is his movie with Aunt Julia.

Mario and a colleague Javier attend a seance, at which...(you'll find out).

The chapter's highlight is Uncle Lucho's fiftieth birthday, celebrated at Bolívar Grill...

The evening at the Bolívar Grill turns out to be more than a birthday celebration for Uncle Lucho. Mario and Aunt Julia begin their one of many intimate moments from their dancing together.

As I read the sequence of chapters, new characters and plots abruptly cropped up. My patience was rewarded with the discovery that these stories were the radio serials, the rage among Lima's female listeners, interspersed with the Mario/Aunt Julia story. Apparently, they were quite good, not only because the scriptwriter (Pedro Camacho), whose direction earned the actor's respect and reverence, but the sound effects as well, which Vargas Llosa describes in chapter 5. One of them in this book is "The Adventures and Misadventures of Don Alberto de Quinteros". These shows are part of another era in radio listening.

Mario's and Aunt Julia's romance grows hotter, starting as friendly movie and café dates to an argument from jealousy. Simultaneously, a longtime romance between Mario's workmate Javier and Mario's cousin Nancy improves.

Mario and Aunt Julia visit the Bolivian scriptwriter Pedro Camacho's tiny room in a once-luxurious bldg, getting to know more about how the famous radio serials dramatist, workaholic, and female listeners' heartthrob keeps writing fresh material day after day--...to live was to write and an eccentric schedule.

Another radio drama follows, this about Don Federico Téllez Unzátegui, who develops a lifelong mania for rodent extermination into a successful business after a horrifying experience in his youth. The rebellious next generation doesn't see it the same way.

Back to Mario--nineteen years old, law student, radio news editor, and short story writer--who's plans to write "Dangerous Games" from hearing about boys who are levitated momentarily off the ground as an airplane takes off.

Another radio serial, this one about how Lucho Abril Marroquin, a "medical detail man" (visits pharmacists and doctors with Bayer Laboratory samples), whose territory is Peru, meets with a disaster that scars him psychically. Body cured, but mind still unsettled and consequently his newly married life disrupted, he follows the zany recommendations of Dr Lucía Acémila to cure his phobias.

Chapter 11-14: Varguitas' romance with Aunt Julia apparently stays hidden from family, and he shares the affair with coworkers at the small radio station Panamericana, which produces newscasts, on account of Aunt Julia's visits there. The other major plot besides Varguitas/Aunt Julia is what is happening at the Genaro's other Lima station Radio Central, where the Bolivian Pedro Camacho is the eponymous scriptwriter who spins out creative serials that boost the station's ratings. What happens when Camacho's twenty-hour workday and his troublesome memory start to mix up characters and plots? And, what happens when Varguitas' and Aunt Julia's family, having only been pretending innocence about the affair, let the lid off the boiling pot? Camacho's fictional serial dramas (The Story of the Reverend, In the Dusty Downtown, etc) alternate with the "real" drama of the radio stations and of Varguitas and Aunt Julia's romance.

Chapter 15-16: These two chapters, particularly 16, had a couple laugh-out-loud parts during young Mario's and older Aunt Julia's overriding family wrath over the unstoppable progress of their love affair. The couple independently gets together official documents and, with friends and taxi drivers, frustratingly persuade several mayors to marry them. Quite a treasure, Vargas Llosa's carrying out this part, which opens with one of the scriptwriter Camacho's fabulous, dramatic radio serials, this one about a famous soccer referee.

Chapter 16-20 (end): The ending is capped by another of Pedro Camacho's spellbinding radio dramas, this about a physically challenged composer and poet, Cristanto Maravillas, in love with a lady, Sor Fátima, in a convent and about what happens when he expands his repertoire to religious themes.

Finally, Vargas Llosa ties the two plots--Mario's romance with Aunt Julia and his depiction of Pedro Camacho, the verbena-mint-tea-drinking Bolivian scriptwriter who produces more mixed up radio serials and exponentially drives up listener ratings.

Memorable parts of this novel are Mario and Aunt Julia trying to get married and Camacho's gripping dramas.