Another book that I’ve read this Christmas in
Bolivia (my first snowless, sleeveless Christmas) assuming that it would have
been about Peru but later discovering that it had countless mentions of the
country where I was staying (and also of the beauty of the women from Santa
Cruz, where half of my wife’s family is from).
Like so many of the Latin American novels that
I’ve read lately, I find this one to be plenty of potential that is often not
fulfilled (although this is probably reflective of a change in my reading
habits, since I thought that all the Latin American books that I read as a
teenager were fulfilling their potential). Yes, the story is sweet, and the
throwback to an era in which people’s life-rhythms were dictated by radio is
chic and class.
The problem for me was that, while the main
story was interesting and fairly captivating, the progressively disjointed
chapters on the radio programs (which make up exactly half of the novel – every
other chapter) became progressively more boring.
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