The Green House

I finally finished The Book of Lost Things a couple of days ago! It was a nice book, and the ending was especially touching...actually, for reasons hard to pinpoint, it moved me closer to tears than a book has in a while. Like I said, I don't know why, as I didn't especially relate with it, neither was it written with any deep sentimentality. Regardless, it left me with a wonderful final impression. A quick, exciting and touching Bildungsroman!

I started Mario Vargas Llosa's The Green House, and it has been an interesting read. When I bought the book, I was not expecting stream of consciousness writing, but Vargas often mixes dialogue that's void of clear tags or punctuation into the narrative. This style, however, doesn't dominate the novel; more conventional dialogue and narrative structures make up a large amount of sections.

Using varies stylistic choices works with the novel. The Green House is made up of many stories, as of yet unconnected except for the settings in which these stories take place and a girl named Bonifacia. The long list of characters are all situated in Piura, Peru, whether as foreigners, visitors, captors, or natives. There is a jungle, a desert, rivers, and a town that drowns in dust. The jarring style mirrors the experience of reading the novel, as the reader tries to constantly piece together different stories, all jumping from past to present.