BookBrowse Reviews The Discreet Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa, Edith Grossman

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In Mario Vargas Llosa's latest novel, a "hero" is not a military man or a patriot who fights for others, but a small entrepreneur who tries to keep his dignity and make a decent living.

By anointing a small businessman (that is, a "capitalist") as a "hero" in his latest novel, The Discreet Hero, Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa defies ideological dogma. Rather than being some idealist's grand vision, heroism is an ordinary man's refusal to compromise, even as he tries to make a decent living.

The titular "hero," Felícito Yanaqué, is the owner of a local transportation company in the Peruvian town of Piura and son of a poor sharecropper and garbage collector from whom he receives a single piece of advice as his only inheritance: "Never let anybody walk all over you, son." Yanaqué, who has been having an affair for the past eight years with a much younger woman, Mabel, appears to be an average, unassuming man. He is married to a religious woman, Gertrudis, with whom he has little in common, save for their two grown-up sons, Miguel and Tiburcio. This quiet life is disturbed by a letter from an extortionist demanding money if Yanaqué wants to stay in business. In the newly prosperous country of Peru most businessmen pay such a monthly "fee" just to be left alone. This is the point where the apparently unassuming Felícito turns into a hero: he is shocked to find out that everybody around him goes along with this practice, and refuses to cough up the money because doing so would go against his father's advice and thereby taint his memory. Yanaqué isn't a brave man, but he can't let the thieves "walk all over" him.

A parallel plot line unfolds in Lima and its hero is one of the richest men in Peru, Ismael Carrera, the recently widowed, octogenarian owner of a successful insurance company. Having found out that his sons, Miki and Escobida, want him dead, Ismael decides to marry his much younger maid, Armida, and leave her his entire fortune. Departing for a honeymoon in Europe, he leaves Rigoberto, his faithful employee, to deal with the consequences of his act and with his sons' rage. Rigoberto, his wife (Lucrecia) and his son (Fonchito) who have appeared in some of Vargas Llosa's previous novels, constitute the only relatively happy family in this novel, even if Foncito causes his father much anxiety because of a character he keeps seeing, a man visible to him alone. Given the economy of the writing, I found this character to represent the only extraneous element — his presence perhaps justified only as a means to spice up the story.

I love beautiful writing as much as anyone else, but among some contemporary authors the notion of a well-crafted line has degenerated into a cheap vision of catchy phrases. A good writer doesn't need this — as is evidenced by the natural simplicity of Vargas Llosa's sentences. On the other hand, a great novelist may use original techniques that challenge narrative conventions. An example is the "interlacing dialog" in The Discreet Hero (which Vargas Llosa also used in his debut, The Time of the Hero), where two conversations that flow one after the other can each be set at different moments in time and space. For example, one of them could be in the present, the other, a flashback. Since the reader is not warned about the differing context for each, such a technique creates a sense of dislocation.

The Discreet Hero is almost perfectly constructed, and even though it doesn't stand next to what I believe to be Vargas Llosa's masterpieces—The War of the End of the World, Conversation in the Cathedral, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter—the gradation of the events, the dialog and the way the two stories come together prove that the author is a master storyteller. Translator Edith Grossman is a perfect match for his sober voice. The novel is proof that Mario Vargas Llosa still has stories to tell and still knows how to do it.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in February 2015, and has been updated for the March 2016 edition. Click here to go to this issue.