Travesuras de la niña mala
Mario Vargas Llosa
Publicado: 2006 | 277 páginas
Novela Drama Romántico

Ricardo ve cumplido, a una edad muy temprana, el sueño que en su Lima natal alimentó desde que tenía uso de razón: vivir en París. Pero el rencuentro con un amor de adolescencia lo cambiará todo. La joven, inconformista, aventurera, pragmática e inquieta, lo arrastrará fuera del pequeño mundo de sus ambiciones.Testigos de épocas convulsas y florecientes en ciudades como Londres, París, Tokio o Madrid, que aquí son mucho más que escenarios, ambos personajes verán sus vidas entrelazarse sin llegar a coincidir del todo. Sin embargo, esta danza de encuentros y desencuentros hará crecer la intensidad del relato página a página hasta propiciar una verdadera fusión del lector con el universo emocional de los protagonistas.Creando una admirable tensión entre lo cómico y lo trágico, Mario Vargas Llosa juega con la realidad y la ficción para liberar una historia en la que el amor se nos muestra indefinible, dueño de mil caras, como la niña mala. Pasión y distancia, azar y destino, dolor y disfrute… ¿Cuál es el verdadero rostro del amor?

1.1

This novel's first-person narrator is one Ricardo Somocurcio, whom we accompany from his teenage years in 1950s Lima, when he dreams of settling down in Paris, throughout later decades when, his dream achieved, he works as an interpreter in the French capital and around the world.

The real protagonist of the story however is, La Nina Mala, the "bad girl" of the title. We first meet her when, as a supposed daughter of Chilean immigrants, she turns heads in Lima. It is here that Ricardo (together with most of his male friends) is first besotted with her. It eventually turns out that she is no less Peruvian than Ricardo and that the background she has made up is simply a ruse to spice up her life story.

Indeed, subterfuge is "la nina mala" 's defining trait. She literally changes name and identity as, over the years, she flits in and out of Ricardo's life at the most unexpected of times. Ricardo falls for her again and again, although he is well aware that she is an opportunistic, cynical woman who, in a rare show of honesty, admits that she will never love him. Against the backdrop of a changing society (from stylish Paris to swinging London at the time of the onset of the AIDS crisis, to Tokyo and Spain), we witness, almost voyeur-like, to a relationship which veers wildly between teenage romance, heart-warming love and erotic obsession.

Like its main character, this novel does not try to be realistic and, as coincidences pile up, the reader is tempted to project allegorical interpretations onto "la nina mala". The most obvious one is that she is a symbol of a novelist's inspiration - a "Muse" of sorts. A novelist's calling is like a siren-song, or like la nina mala's charm - hard to ignore, even if it brings sacrifice, pain and penury.

Whether the novel is read at face value or as a symbolic journey, it remains a poetic work, beautifully rendered in this Italian translation. ( )

As with any Llosa novel, a good read, and as usual, a wonderful translation that carries the cadence and feel of the language. My favorite section was the beginning, as the narrator recounts the best summer of his life in his native Peru. The coincidences pile up however and the intersections between the lives of the novels two central characters become a bit much - but I still enjoyed the novel. It just isn't as magnificent as his other works. ( )

I've been hooked on Vargas Llosa for more than thirty years. This is the seventh book of his that I've read. While I've not read all his work I agree with a reviewer on Goodreads that this book is one of Vargas Llosa's best. I also read another popular reviewer on Goodreads who had a very different perspective, female. She saw this book as just a recurrent male fantasy that several writers had already explored and questioned why Vargas Llosa wasted his time on ground, which to her mind, had been gone over ad nauseum. In important ways I agree with both. She is correct, it is a recurrent male fantasy, but the male reviewer is also correct, this is one of Vargas Llosa's best.

The story traces the lives of two people, the bad girl, and the good boy, who is also the narrator. They meet as schoolchildren in Miraflores Peru and that's where his crush on her begins. For much of the novel this is the story of unrequited love. The boy is hopelessly head over heels in love with the bad girl who, for most of her life, spurns him and denigrates him at every chance she gets but does seductively encourage him and at times becomes his lover. He relentlessly asks her to marry him and she flatly refuses. She assumes various identities and she appears and disappears without a trace usually leaving havoc in her wake.

While their story begins in Peru the bulk of it happens in Paris with side trips to London, Tokyo and even Madrid. With each locale Vargas Llosa points out streets, buildings, neighborhoods, stores, restaurants and other landmarks that ground it and make it realistic to any reader familiar with the areas. Pop culture also figures prominently as Vargas Llosa shows his journalistic skills taking us through many of the icons rising and falling during the several decades relationship. They keep the story both believable and show how time is marching on regardless of whatever state the relationship is in.

Eventually the bad girl realizes the good boy is the only person who has stood by her and who she can trust, even though his realization that so much of what she tells him are actually lies. As she ages and losses her considerable strength to entice men she finally consents to marry him if only to take advantage of marriage to a French citizen to help he get papers she needs to find employment.

There's even more to this story, it's not over. It continues to enthrall. ( )