The Bad Girl: A Novel
by Mario Vargas-Llosa
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Read in February, 2008
Puedo fechar con exactitud cuando lei este libro: entre el 2 y el 3 de febrero del 2008, mientras convalecia de una gripe que me tenia ya 3 dias sin salir de la casa.
Anticipaba el placer de leer, mientras hacia lo posible por terminar "Lord of the Flies", que francamente termine de leer por esa obligacion estupida, impuesta solo por mi, de terminar lo que comienzo a leer. Y es que Vargas Llosa tiene algnos libros que me parecen estupendos: La Guerra del Fin del Mundo, La Fiesta de...more
Anticipaba el placer de leer, mientras hacia lo posible por terminar "Lord of the Flies", que francamente termine de leer por esa obligacion estupida, impuesta solo por mi, de terminar lo que comienzo a leer. Y es que Vargas Llosa tiene algnos libros que me parecen estupendos: La Guerra del Fin del Mundo, La Fiesta de...more
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Read in September, 2006
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 entre...more
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 entre...more
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Read in January, 2008
I became completely mesmerized by this book of obsessive love. The bad girl is a Peruvian girl the narrator knew when he was a boy, and she keeps coming in and out of his life in different identities. The more cruel she is to him, the more he loves her. But this intelligent, articulate, sensitive man is powerless to his obsession. He tries repeatedly to free himself from her spell, but he can't. He can't explain her power over him. I find that fascinating, haunting, and sad. She became the centr...more
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Read in November, 2007
Love? Obsession? Same thing
She has no name—at least not a reliable one. When Peruvian teenager Ricardo Somocurcio first encounters the girl he’s doomed to love for the rest of his life, he knows her as Lily. Years later, in revolutionary 1960s Paris, she’s Comrade Arlette. Farther down the line, she’s Kuriko. It’s much easier to just call her “bad girl.” A composite of every wrong person you’ve ever been infatuated with—she’s cruel, mocking and utterly irresistible. Th...more
She has no name—at least not a reliable one. When Peruvian teenager Ricardo Somocurcio first encounters the girl he’s doomed to love for the rest of his life, he knows her as Lily. Years later, in revolutionary 1960s Paris, she’s Comrade Arlette. Farther down the line, she’s Kuriko. It’s much easier to just call her “bad girl.” A composite of every wrong person you’ve ever been infatuated with—she’s cruel, mocking and utterly irresistible. Th...more
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Read in May, 2008
Mario Vargas Llosa is such an amazing author. This book was a joy to read simply to soak in his flawless storytelling and meet the many characters that he develops so fully and vividly. However the bad situations that certain of the characters got themselves into were so graphically described at times that it gave me a very sick feeling; evidence of just how great the storytelling is, but certainly not reading material for the faint of heart. I am not sure who I would recommend this book to o...more
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Read in January, 2007
recommends it for:
Mature Readers
Next to the "Bad Girl" Madame Bovary is a porcelin shepherdess. I mean, sizzle, sizzle, crack, burn. The review I read in a respected journal actually compared this novel to Flaubert's but I missed the points. Yes, through her various manifestations Lily, Japanese love slave , English Horsey Set Matron, Guerrilla fighter for Peruvian democracy and at the point where I am reading, frail suffering victim who no matter what horrors she perpretrates, is loved faithfully and insanely...more
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Read in October, 2007
Once upon a time, in a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa, there was a good boy who fell in love with a bad girl. He treated her with tenderness; she repaid him with cruelty. The bad girl mocked the good boy’s devotion, criticized his lack of ambition, exploited his generosity when it was useful to her and abandoned him when it was not. No matter how often the bad girl betrayed the good boy, he welcomed her back, and thus she forsook him many times. So it went until one of them died.
Do you recognize...more
Do you recognize...more
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Read in June, 2008
Although I liked Ricardo, the protaginist of the story, I often felt frustrated with him for constantly falling prey to "the bad girl", a woman he loves without reciprocation for his entire life. The story follows the ordinary life of Ricardo whose only extraordinary quality is that he loves an adventurous, risk-taking, slightly insane con woman. The woman, whose names, identities and husbands change frequently, is a great character study. As the antagonist and love interest, she is bo...more
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Read in June, 2008
I would say The Bad Girl is a cheap sentimental thing, but it's more than that. It's a tribute to Flaubert, to Madame Bovary, to women who can't keep their place, and to the men who love them. (Oops, this is sounding a bit like a self-help review!)
Even though it's lusciously written, there is something irritating and unsatisfying about the whole read. Ricardo and his Peruvian girl are co-dependents, too caught up in themselves and their games to see the whole world. They are defined by t...more
Even though it's lusciously written, there is something irritating and unsatisfying about the whole read. Ricardo and his Peruvian girl are co-dependents, too caught up in themselves and their games to see the whole world. They are defined by t...more
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Read in December, 2007
i really liked this book. peruvian man moves to paris to live out his dream. it's moving to see him struggle with his love for the good girl. maybe he's got a heart, or he just really loves her but he keeps falling for her every single time she hurts him and comes back. he promises not to fall for it again, yet he does.
she hurts him and he suffers, yet he still loves her. is that what true love is? i hope not because it's not very reassuring.
i read the english translation but would love t...more
she hurts him and he suffers, yet he still loves her. is that what true love is? i hope not because it's not very reassuring.
i read the english translation but would love t...more
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Read in December, 2007
Heartfelt, lyrical, emotional, like a Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's magical realism but all about one lady, the bad girl, and the guy who loves her. And like, KEEPS loving her, even though she acts like the most heinous backstabbing bitch and consistently abuses his love and trust at every opportunity. HE KNOWS THIS. But loves her anyway. Is it because she's the most exciting thing in his life? Would he love her as much if she were merely good to him? It kind of meanders along, and all the european t...more
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Read in September, 2007
recommends it for:
Suan Pineda
La vida puede tener sueños a partir de una realidad. Más allá del amor está la verdad descarnada de lo que puede haber en una relación en la que no se sabe si hay amistad o si esta trasciende al amor.
No importa el tiempo, ni la distancia, sino la fuerza con la que se ama, y no importa tampoco cuál es la forma que toma ese amor, siempre habrá un punto de encuentro con ese alguien a quien le entregas tu cariño, poco a poco, o todo completo, sin esperar nada a cambio hasta que llega el in...more
No importa el tiempo, ni la distancia, sino la fuerza con la que se ama, y no importa tampoco cuál es la forma que toma ese amor, siempre habrá un punto de encuentro con ese alguien a quien le entregas tu cariño, poco a poco, o todo completo, sin esperar nada a cambio hasta que llega el in...more
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Read in October, 2007
recommends it for:
everyone
This book is about a boy called Ricardo that fell in love with Lily. But Lily was bad to Ricardo even though Ricardo loved her so much. Lily treated Ricardo good when she thought he is honest or gentle, but Lily didn't treat him good when he was not honest or gentle. Even Lily thought Ricardo in a bad way and said he was not strong and good enough, but Ricardo still loved her. I think Lily is really bad because she didn't care how much Ricardo loved her and treated him badly. I learned from...more
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Read in February, 2008
recommends it for:
Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende fans
A This book was really fantastic; I could not help falling in love with the writing. Ricardo falls in love with a "bad girl" who constantly lies, refuses to give him love, and uses him; the high points of his life are when she is around--which I think really says something b/c being in love can sustain you and keep you moving. The writing is fabulous, and I love the way they constantly find each other, she seeking him at the end. The ending really got me--I love this book and highly re...more
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this book was intereting i actually went on the trip to meet mario llosa. however this book is about a peruvian man who moves to paris and live out his dream. it's interesting to see him struggle with his love for the good girl. maybe he's got a heart, or he just really loves her but he keeps falling for her every single time she hurts him and comes back. he promises not to fall for it again, yet he does. she hurts him and he suffers, yet he still loves her. i hear the book has been translated i...more
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MVL wrote this when he was 69 and it´s great to see him getting better with age. I read this book in about four sittings which is pretty fast considering my level of Spanish. It is a truly epic novel spanning the lifetime of one of the characters. It was interesting how the life of the main character mirrored Mario Vargas Llosa`s life in Peru, Paris, London, and Madrid.
As a student of Spanish I found this easy to read whereas I had a lot of difficulty with La Fiesta del Chivo from the sam...more
As a student of Spanish I found this easy to read whereas I had a lot of difficulty with La Fiesta del Chivo from the sam...more
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Read in November, 2007
This book is about a man who meets this girl and falls in love with her. The thing about her, though, is that she constantly moves around the world with a different identity but he somehow keeps running into her. It was a really good, well written book but for the most part, i felt like i was reading the same story every chapter just in a different setting. The ending, though, blew me away. I guess i shouldn't say it but i will say that it was completely unexpected and i found myself almost in t...more
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Read in May, 2008
My first impression would be that I read one of Llosa's inferior works. The story is hackneyed ('Of Human Bondage' inspirations?) and the imagination remains constrained within the political and social dynamics of the time. While, the story tries to flit from situation to situation, background to background, inevitably packaging as much as it can...the only well fleshed out character remains Ricardo. The Bad Girl unfortunately just about misses the cut.
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Read in February, 2008
Llosa's newest novel received rave-ish reviews, so I bought it -- and trudged through it. 'Twasn't the page turner I expected, but there was enough Peruvian history [narrated by the ex pat main character] to keep me reading. I just know there's heavy symbolism here......was the Bad Girl a stand-in for Peru? I dunno. I miss english lit classes, where the prof spoon fed us the meaning, the allusions....
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Read in January, 2008
Although I can relate to the protagonist's infatuation with a woman (although I don't think I ever understood why he was so enamored with the bad girl), I would have definitely drawn the line way before Ricardo Somocurcio did. And, I don't think the rewards he received at the end of the book were equal to thirty years of grief and suffering--but, I could be wrong about that...
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