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. ( )

«La imagen de esos primitivos habladores que recorrían los bosques llevando historias de aldea en aldea me acompañó urgiéndome cada día más a fantasear una historia a partir de ellos.» Mario Vargas Llosa En El hablador Mario Vargas Llosa contrapone con extraordinario virtuosismo técnico dos mundos que parecen vivir enfrentados, el de las sociedades modernas y el de los pueblos que viven en armonía con la naturaleza. A su vez conduce al lector a un viaje vertiginoso por el imaginario colectivo de los indios machiguengas, que le sirve para desarrollar, una vez más, una de sus obsesiones: el papel de la ficción en la vida de los hombres. ( )

En esta novela, Mario Vargas Llosa contrapone con extraordinario virtuosismo técnico dos mundos que parecen vivir enfrentados, el de las sociedades modernas y el de los pueblos que viven en armonía con la naturaleza. A su vez, conduce al lector a un viaje vertiginoso por el imaginario colectivo de los indios machiguengas, que les sirve para desarrollar, una vez más, una de sus obsesiones: el papel de la ficción en la vida de los hombres.

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. ( )