A Fish in the Water: A Memoir

Rating:
Summary: Bittersweet Tale of a Sacrificial Llama
Review: A Fish In the Water is Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa's bittersweet tale of the three years he spent in public life and of his quixotic campaign for the presidency of his native Peru.

His candidacy, he says, all came about "through the caprice of the wheel of fortune." At the time, he thought his decision to run for president of Peru was a "moral" one. "Circumstances," he writes, "placed me in a position of leadership at a critical moment in the life of my country." But Vargas Llosa is first and foremost a writer, not a politician, and so he has been willing to dig a little deeper into the reasoning behind his decision. "If the decadence, the impoverishment, the terrorism, and the multiple crises of Peruvian society had not made it an almost impossible challenge to govern such a country, it would never have entered my head to accept such a task." Motivation doesn't get much more quixotic than that.

Even more engaging than Vargas Llosa's revelations about his unsuccessful foray into the political world, are his reminiscences about his childhood and youth, which he intersperses throughout this book. He begins with a vivid and traumatic memory: the revelation by his mother that his father, whom the author thought had died before his birth, was, in reality, alive and waiting to meet him in a nearby hotel. It was a revelation that Vargas Llosa did not greet with joy.

In fiction, the cruelties experienced in childhood might be used to help explain the adult who survived them, but Vargas Llosa wisely makes no attempt to connect the two. The sections regarding the presidential campaign and those on his youth run along parallel tracks, but the story of his early life trails off after his graduation from college and his decision to go to Europe to write. The matter-of-fact air about the stories suggests that Vargas Llosa is more concerned with remembering than with interpreting and analyzing.

While the personal memories make for the most compelling reading, the campaign memoir does offer a convincing self-portrait of a political innocent sinking under a tide of democratic absurdities. Wildly popular at first, Vargas Llosa presented a coherent, but harsh, economic plan to his fellow Peruvians and rapidly became Peru's sacrificial llama. Near the end of the campaign, he endured catcalls, stone throwing and scurrilous allegations about almost everything, including his books.

Those of us who know and love Vargas Llosa and his books greeted his loss to Alberto Fujimori with more than one sigh of relief. But anyone who has an interest in the gorgeous landscape of Peru, Latin American politics, or the magnificent works of Mario Vargas Llosa will find this book essential reading.

Rating:
Summary: Real Life and Fiction
Review: Many memoirs have the benefit of allowing us a personal interpretation on events we have observed in the media on a more superficial scale. The main attraction of this memoir is being able to catch a glimpse of the real life events that later shaped Vargas Llosa's amazing fiction. The fact that his early life was the foundation of many of his great works (Conversations in the Cathedral, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter etc)is perhaps suggestion enough to the avid Vargas Llosa reader that the accounts of his childhood, adolescence and early manhood are sure to be fascinating, and indeed they are.

The stories of his early life are interspersed with his ill fated run for Presidency in Peru much later in his life. Although this section is also well written and offers an insightful if rather bleak view of the politics of the third world it doesn't match the magic and narrative interest of his earlier memoirs.

Overall this book presents a portrait of a wise, humble and compassionate man who struggles to come to terms with his ambivalence for his homeland.

Rating:
Summary: Real Life and Fiction
Review: Many memoirs have the benefit of allowing us a personal interpretation on events we have observed in the media on a more superficial scale. The main attraction of this memoir is being able to catch a glimpse of the real life events that later shaped Vargas Llosa's amazing fiction. The fact that his early life was the foundation of many of his great works (Conversations in the Cathedral, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter etc)is perhaps suggestion enough to the avid Vargas Llosa reader that the accounts of his childhood, adolescence and early manhood are sure to be fascinating, and indeed they are.

The stories of his early life are interspersed with his ill fated run for Presidency in Peru much later in his life. Although this section is also well written and offers an insightful if rather bleak view of the politics of the third world it doesn't match the magic and narrative interest of his earlier memoirs.

Overall this book presents a portrait of a wise, humble and compassionate man who struggles to come to terms with his ambivalence for his homeland.

Rating:
Summary: Too bad he lost the election
Review: Mario Vargas Llosa's account of his presidential campaign, interwoven with a memoir of his childhood and young adulthood, is compelling. It is a shame that someone with such a practical, intelligent and courageous plan for governing Peru was not elected. Vargas Llosa has serious doubts that Peru will ever become a "serious" nation, and after reading A Fish in the Water it's difficult to disagree. The insights into racism in Peru are fascinating, and the story of his young life is entertaining and at times moving, especially as it concerns his abusive father. This work is not at all self-serving, and yet the reader cannot help but admire (and like) Vargas Llosa. My only quibble is that some of the passages of his college days are overlong with lists of friends and acquaintances, some of whom are not remarkable and could have easily been left out. But Vargas Llosa, as usual, has produced a work of rigor and grace.