This story will remain with me for awhile- makes you question so many assumptions and understandings of civilization. Also, I love how the story is told- the format of alternate protagonists telling alternate stories. ( )

I did something with this book that I can't remember last doing: I stopped reading partway through the book. The first section of the book was decent. The second section, for me, was unintelligible. What I did understand of it, I was not enjoying. It was painful, and there was no enjoyment mixed with the pain. Life is too short. I have read other reviewers who raved about how unique the voices in the story are. Perhaps I will go back and try again at some point. I don't know. Once the memory of the pain has faded. ( )

It is easier to live with a bad book with low aspirations than a mediocre book with high ones. I was mad much of the way through Mario Vargas Llosa's THE STORY TELLER because I wanted to love it but he wouldn't let me. Llosa touches on many themes that touch me including displaced cultures, indigenous mythology, cultural and personal identity, comparative religions, man vs. nature, media vs. culture, art as communication and communication as art. After an introduction that teases a great mystery, we know almost immediately what the answer to the mystery will be and that it will not be satisfying. In the meantime we are held at bay as the author plays out his themes as if in a series of writing exercises. The indigenous myths are meant to parallel the progression of the story in fact and structure but they are slapped onto the narrative in such a ham fisted manner that I felt like I had to wade through them rather than have them rise and lift me. There is some jumping back in forth in time that only accentuates the lack for forward movement the narrative. It's like reading Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS if Marlow talked about the river but never got into the boat. There are interesting parts where he touches on the history and politics of Peru and the history of indigenous tribes and the missionaries who live with them and working within the Peruvian TV industry--but it all feels disjointed like many separate small streams that never meet to form that mighty river. ( )

I started reading this novel while traveling in Peru. While in Peru, I learned about many of the Andean people's cultures. This novel takes places more than 20 years ago and discusses the influence of other cultures on these Andean cultures, particularly the influence of missionaries, ethnologists, government officials, entrepreneurs. The novel raises and explores the question of how people from outside the culture affect it, both intentionally and unintentionally. When a person meets another, they bring and share themselves, and will change the other person- the way the person thinks or behaves, and will be influenced.

I was quite surprised by the change in the Storyteller himself and what stories he told toward the end. I think about why the storyteller chose those later stories and had his thinking changed...

I found the writing interesting and thought provoking, but the chapters were very long. ( )

In a Florentine shop, a Peruvian writer sees a photo of a Peruvian tribe mesmerized by a tribal storyteller, an almost mystical and mythical person rarely mentioned or even acknowledged to outsiders to exist. For years the writer has been searching for information on this tribe, and also for news of an old school friend who'd disappeared years ago. In the photo, he believes he sees his friend: the storyteller, fully assimilated into this primitive culture hiding in the Amazon. So opens a novel which is told in long, alternating chapters, first by the writer and then by the storyteller. The underlying debate: should isolated and primitive groups be Westernized or allowed to live their own culture? This is a question the two friends had often argued about at university, and here we are presented with both the writer's version of events leading him to discover his friend's destiny, if only in a photo, and the storyteller's tales of his people, their struggles to maintain their nomadic lifestyle (and therefore protect the world from the sun falling permanently into darkness), and stories of the invention of the world and its various supernatural, human, and animal inhabitants.

Although it's initially a challenge to adjust to the storyteller's language and cadence, his stories soon become the most interesting part of the novel as he recounts the tribe's mythology and his own adventures, interweaving tales from his culture of origin couched in the tribe's way of seeing the world. The author's own story very logically lays out the ethical questions in cultural clashes, but these sections pale in comparison to the storyteller's magical words. Highly recommended! ( )