The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto- Mario Vergas Llosa

I can't make up my mind about this book. I am staring at it and trying to decide- did I like or didn't I. Let me get the things I am sure about out of the way- Llosa is a genius and I don't like erotica. But  this book cannot be dismissed as just erotica. This book is many things but before we get to that-

The eponymous ( I always wanted to use that word) Rigoberto is an aesthete and an erotomaniac who spends his days as an insurance executive and the nights fantasising about his separated second wife, Lucrecia. whom he still loves passionately. Hi s son Fonchito sets about trying to unite them.Fonchito- innocent boy or a fiend. Fonchito is obsessed with  the Viennese painter Egon Schiele and uses Lucrecia and her maid Justiniana.Very soon you discover that something occurred , something unforgivable between the boy and the step-mother that caused the separation It is never told to you and you are left wondering till  the end.

There are enough erotic scenes described in the book except the one that you desperately want to know about. Yet all that you know is that it happened and in Lucrecia's bed. and you are not sure who was the seducer and who was seduced. Does the boy know what he is saying and doing or is unaware? You never find out.

The couple however do unite and much remains unresolved, much unspoken and others hinted at. As Rigoberto asks in the end- In spite of everything, we are a happy family , are we not and I couldn't decide whether they were or not.

And this is layered with the many letters Rigoberto writes on art, sexuality and sports. and the anonymous letters that are exchanged between the couple. These make the reading rich, funny and erudite.

Now you  see why I can't make up my mind. I would love to know what other readers feel/think.
Oh and just for record- Llosa won the Nobel in 2010.

The Master of Petersburg - J.M.Coetzee

Every body has to read a Coetzee. Once I decided that, I went in search of one. I picked the Master of Petersburg because it's about a writer, Dostoevsky, none less. No, it's not a biography, nothing could be further than that. Coetzee, I quote the blurb here, 'dares to imagine the life of  Dostoevsky.'
No, not the whole life, the events that unfold after sudden death of his stepson.

A few pages of reading and the book reached out and grabbed me with such force that I had to stop every few pages just to breathe. The  overwhelming reaction made me record as I wrote. And here is some of that:




This is one of those books which needs to be recorded as the journey of it's reading unfolds. You'll see why.



Page 45- I have to stop and gasp for breath. Coetzee has wound around me silken bonds , so effortlessly and skillfully , of deep emotions and sly thoughts and I notice only now when the bonds begin to chaff. I have to go away and sort Fyodor's emotions towards his son. his son's death, to his landlady and his grief. There is much for me to feel and much more to think.

Page 98- I have to stop again. Nothing has happened yet much has happened in the last 53 pages. His son comes to life to me, and so does Fyodor. I can'/t be sure I like him but I can reach out and feel his grief and his need for - I don' t know what to call it, closure seems so tame to the richness of his emotions- but for now, closure will have to do. I feel for the ring at the end of my nose , through which Coetzee has strung this rope with with which he leads me through this maze of his making.

Then Nechaev appears, his son begins to take shape , the daughter of the landlady, the Finnish comrade of Nechaev and even the police- you are no longer sure who is right and who is wrong and what really happened the day the stepson died . Fydor, you are increasingly convinced is the product of pre-revolutionary idea and  you buy Coetzee 's  idea of how great literature can be born out of a tormented mind.
And walk away with a feeling that Coetzee might well be as much a genius as Dostoevsky.

Read it- It should be required reading for everybody who worships at the alter of  the BOOK.