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Lima Nights Lima Nights Lima Nights (2008)

by Marie Arana(Favorite Author)

3.07 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0440338182 (ISBN13: 9780440338185)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Dial Press

review 1: I read a few other reviews, and was struck by those that wrote the ending was like hitting a wall, suggesting the book ended prematurely and/or without closure. That wasn't my impression. I thought the ending - a frantic, chaotic, dangerous search for the elusive - was quite typical of the story and appreciated it wasn't a tidy nor happy ending. It was a simple story - the unraveling of a man's life because of lust, that, in the end, even he couldn't seem to reconcile. And of a young girl living in the slums of Lima who found an opportunity to get out and took it. I appreciated the author didn't explain away, or sum up, either the confusion the characters struggled with personally and in their relationship. The undoing of their relationship was based on a misunderstan... moreding: Maria thinking Carlos was having an affair lead her to the vidente (spanish for 'seer' - someone who predicts things that will happen in the future) and given potions to keep him in her lair; Carlos finding out and going to a vidente to counter what he believes is Maria trying to poison him after being told by the seer Maria has never loved him. That this misunderstanding became, for me, the heart of the story because the unraveling begins and the lies exposed. Except the characters continue to question what's true or not.Just as Carlos's friends are stymied at his hysteria, so is the reader left with seeing the complexities of relationships and the author didn't patronize her readers by wrapping it up neatly in the end.
review 2: This is a really difficult book to review. The writing is a beautiful as promised. The mechanics of the writing are well done and the author has a gift for lyrical prose. That said, I hated the story. Basically an old man takes a child as his lover thereby blowing up his marriage and family. Maria was 15 and working two jobs because she and her family lived in abject poverty and Carlos was a rich, bored white guy in the neighborhood of three times Maria's age. Maybe it was my inner feminist coming out or parental instincts, but I could not get past that this dirty old man was taking advantage of a young vulnerable girl. I give the three stars because the writing was amazing, but I only gave three stars because I just could not handle the premise. On the other hand, because her writing was so good, I will defininitely be checking out her other books. less

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