The Bad Girl
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5.0 • 5 Ratings
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- £6.49
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- £6.49
Publisher Description
A gripping and poignant novel about a mysterious romance from one of Latin America's greatest writers.
'Splendid, suspenseful and irresistible.' New York Times
'Immensely moving.' Spectator
When the beautiful teenage Lily arrives in Lima in 1950, fifteen-year-old Ricardo falls instantly in love with her. She claims to be from Chile, but vanishes the moment it becomes clear that she has lied about both her name and her nationality. A decade later, now living in Paris, Ricardo falls in love with a woman named Comrade Arlette, who is incredibly similar to Lily but refuses to acknowledge that she is the same person. For his whole life, Ricardo seems doomed to keep running into 'Lily', and to keep falling in love with her. Will he ever discover who she really is?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Veteran Peruvian novelist Vargas Llosa's appealing, nostalgic latest opens in the summer of 1950, as Ricardo "Slim" Somocurcio, a rambunctious teen in the affluent Miraflores section of Lima, meets 14-year-old nymph Lily. With her younger sister, Lily is masquerading as a wealthy, liberated Chilean girl to disguise her slum origins. She is soon exposed by a jealous schoolmate and disappears, but Ricardo is smitten. There are dashes of Vertigo and Last Year at Marienbad in what follows. As an adult, Ricardo's work as a translator for UNESCO takes him over the decades everywhere from late '50s Paris to the Beatles's London to gangland Tokyo. Everywhere he goes, his bad girl shows up in dramatically different disguises, denying she was his childhood sweetheart or that they've ever met before, but ravishing him completely. None of the characters is particularly nuanced, but Vargas Llosa is a master of description, and his gift for evoking sounds, smells and tastes makes each (often very graphic) encounter with Lily fresh. And with Ricardo's knack for being where the action is, whole "scenes" of the postwar period flare into view, as Lily's sexual perfidy eventually leads to serious trouble. The result is rich but not in the least deep.
Customer Reviews
travesuras de la Niña mala
Llegué a odiar a la "chilenita" pero creo que la parte final te da algunas respuestas y a mi parecer, es justo para todos.
Increíble y cautivante novela de entrega total de amor de nuestro genial escritor peruano Vargas Llosa.