The Way to Paradise : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: A false paradise
Review:

At first glance, The Way To Paradise is a classic example of Mario Vargas Llosa's style: interesting and unusual characters, colorful settings, poetic prose. The book even uses Mr. Vargas Llosa's preferred device of switching between narratives in alternating chapters as he did with such great success in Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter and The Feast of the Goat, among others.

But in the end, I think, the story falls well short of those other two wonderful books, for a variety of reasons that left me puzzled.

First, I'll add my name to the chorus of reviewers who were left confused by Mr. Vargas Llosa's decision to pepper his narrative with second-hand comments from the book's two main characters (especially with Flora Tristán, who seems to ask herself at least once every page something like "but you could not have known that, could you, Flora?").

More importantly, the style of alternating chapters between the story of Ms. Tristán, a 19th century social reformer, and her grandson Paul Gauguin, the painter, doesn't work nearly as well here as it does elsewhere. That is mostly because the two stories have very little to do with each other. Ms. Tristán and Mr. Gauguin were related -- though they never met each other -- but aside from a few passing and insignificant comments by Mr. Gauguin about his grandmother, one story line never crossed. Are you interested in the story of Ms. Tristán's epic battle to mobilize workers in France in the 1840s? Then read the odd-numbered chapters. Do you prefer the story of the famous painter of Tahiti and Tahitians around the turn of the 20th Century? Then skip the odd and read only the even-numbered installments.

The one common thread between the two narratives is hinted at in the title: in their own way, both Ms. Tristán and Mr. Gauguin spend their lives trying to reach a certain kind of paradise. In the case of the former, it's through trying to create a kind of workers' paradise in which women and laborers are protagonists. In the case of the latter, it is through fleeing the closed art world of Paris in the 1880s for the paradise of Tahiti, where Mr. Gauguin felt the savage and pure soul of mankind was still bare to see. But in the end, all both characters find is frustration and, of course, death.

Days after finishing the book, it is both characters' deaths that stick with me the most. Mr. Vargas Llosa describes their physical declines with horrible consistency. The biting and consuming gut pains that crippled Ms. Tristán upset my own stomach. And the periodic descriptions of the insects attracted to the foul-smelling puss dripping from Mr. Gauguin's syphilis sores more than once left a bitter scowl on my face.

Mr. Vargas Llosa does deserve kudos for the way he brings two distant and distinct historical characters to life, his second consecutive historical novel in which mounds of research make the actual history seem at once central and effortless. If you are a fan of Mr. Vargas Llosa's work, you'll no doubt find plenty to enjoy in The Way To Paradise. But to everyone else, I'd recommend one of the author's real top-shelf efforts. There are plenty to pick from.


Rating:
Summary: Paradise
Review: A book in the genre of "Agony and Ecstasy" and "Lust for Life", this part-fact and part-fiction story (or novel?) is based on the life of the painter Paul Gauguin and that of his grandmother Flora Tristan.

The book's chapters alternate between the lives of Gaugin and Tristan trying to draw a common thread between their seemingly uncommon lives.

Though Gauguin is obviously better known of the 2 characters, Llosa's novel does well to bring to light the life and work of his illustrious socialist grandmother who devoted her life to the upliftment of the women.

Each of the two central characters (adventurers in their own sense) are searching for paradise - the grandmother by trying to change the world and the grandson by escaping from his world. The question the reader is forced to ask is "Did both of them discover their respective paradises?"

An extremely fast and engrossing read though it took me three chapters to figure out the writers style of writing (referring to the characters in second person) and his oscillation between the events in the lives of the two protagonists. As always, I am sure the original untranslated version made a better read than the translated-into-English version.

Rating:
Summary: TRULY DISAPPOINTING
Review: After having been impressed with many new aspects of Gauguin's art in the beautifully curated new show now at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, I decided it would be interesting to learn more about Paul Gauguin's final years when he produced what I felt to be his best work. I hoped that The Way to Paradise would be helpful in this regard.

I got more than I expected. The book is actually a novel based on the lives of two people, Flora Tristan, Gauguin's grandmother, as well as Gauguin. Each is told from the perspective of their final years, with flashback reflections. Chapters alternate looking at the two lives. At first, that seemed like a distraction. But later, the artistic design became clearer. Flora Tristan would not have approved of her grandson, and he comes across even less sympathetically than I expected in the context of his family heritage. Although I picked up details about Gauguin that I wanted to learn about the context for his final works, I learned a lot about a remarkable woman about whom I would like to learn more, his grandmother.

Flora Tristan's life epitomizes the evils of the legal system and popular attitudes towards women in those waning decades before women began to earn equal rights. Because her parents' marriage was not a legal one, she could not inherit her father's wealth. Her husband was a brute who was not legally restrained after he committed many wrongs against her and her children . . . but only after he shot her. So she led much of her adult life like Jean Valjean, on the run from the laws which would have returned her and her children to the abuser. In the process, she developed a remarkable sensitivity to the downtrodden, including other women, slaves and industrial workers. She often dressed as a man to go places where women were not allowed or to pursue her goals of social reform. During a visit to England, she was encouraged by the Chartist movement to imagine a European-wide coalition of workers that would lead to reform. In pursuing her hopes for creating a better life on earth, she spent her final months while very ill recruiting workers for her union despite official resistance to her proselytizing. In one remarkable sequence, she traveled alone to Peru from France in hopes of gaining some of her father's estate.

The book focuses on Gauguin's life from the time he first set out for Tahiti. You find out more about his interest in the native customs and his relationships with the people there than about his art. The story focuses on his physical and mental deterioration as syphilis ravaged his body. Despite warnings that he was infectious, he sought sexual gratification from a series of young women (and any other woman who would make herself available). He comes across as the worst sort of abuser, the sort his grandmother would have hated. His vision was of a primitive past that was more fundamental and pure than the present, to be found in expired Maori practices that he cannot contact.

The contrast between the two lives is very powerful beginning around the middle of the book. Until then, I was often puzzled by why the book developed that way.

I found two things to be unpleasant about reading the book. First, the author assumed that I knew a lot more about Gauguin's life than I did. So many of the early details were only revealed in flashbacks near the end of the book. They would have been much more interesting and relevant if portrayed much earlier. The flashbacks themselves were put in as extended ruminations about the past. As such, these flashbacks didn't work well in some cases. They made both characters seem overly introspective. Gauguin, in particular, struck me as someone who was probably not very introspective at all.

Second, there is a lot of editorializing that comes in like an awkward third character. In most cases, the editorializing seems to add nothing to thoughts I had already had . . . such as how a married man acquired syphilis. I suspect that it would have worked better to have either skipped writing these sections or to have them develop as part of dialogue with another character. Here's an example: "The game of Paradise! You had yet to find that slippery place, Koki. Did it exist? Was it an illusion, a mirage?"

The immense number of details about daily life of the two main characters is impressive. With those details, you feel closer to the characters than you could have imagined considering that they led much different lives than most of us do now.

I was pleased to find that the book described the circumstances around the creation of many of the art works that I was most interested in. Unfortunately, the author doesn't seem to have the background in art to fully engage in describing the artistic processes that Gauguin used. Such a focus would have made the book much more appealing to me.

So, despite my reservations, I do encourage you to read the book.

When you finish, think about where you see the potential for paradise.

Rating:
Summary: Sublime
Review: Excellent book, following the narrative style of "La fiesta del Chivo" but with a totally different topic, Vargas Llosa beautifully describes the thoughts and lives of two completely different minds but equally strong personalities (must be in their blood, as they are related): the painter Gauguin and his feminist/socialist grandmother Flora Tristan. And, if you like art, I think that Vargas Llosa makes a wonderful job describing the thoughts that originate some of Gauguin's paintings... it is just sublime. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: One of Vargas Llosa's Best
Review: I am great fan of Vargas Llosa, having read all his novels. While others have criticized his style, I find it works exceptionally well in this particular novel. The non-linearity of each of the protagonist's stories adds to a much fuller understanding of Koke and Flora. You appreciate each more after learning what choices they made to become who they are, when you already know them in their "prime". Unlike many other reviewers, I found Vargas Llosa's style of interjecting comments by the protagonists added an itimacy and immediacy to the stories.
And now to do my own research on Flora and Paul....
For any of you who have not read Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, it is perhaps his best and most enjoyable novel. Feast of the Goat also a great read. Though my personal favorite is The War at the End of the World, another historical novel, though about much more arcane subject.

Rating:
Summary: TRULY DISAPPOINTING
Review: I love the works of Gauguin and was curious about his "workers rights" grandmother when reading a review of this book. But, it is very confusing at first due to Llosa's style of writing. There seems to be a narrator as well as the dialogue from the characters. I got used to it after a while, but didn't care for it at all. Very annoying. Some people have referred to this as second person writing and third person writing. Based on this style, I'll not read any other of Llosa's works.

In spite of the lousy writing style, it was interesting to hear more about Gauguin's possible reasons for his use of color, images, locations, etc. And, his grandmother's story was worth hearing about.

Rating:
Summary: Will The Real Gauguin Please Stand Up ...
Review: I remember as a young man reading The Moon and The Six Pence by Somerset Maugham and being intriged by the persona of Gauguin , and now Mario Vargas Llosa took me to another level of Gauguin's life and I am impressed by such a good novel , connecting Gauguin , Gauguin's grandmother , France , Peru and Tahiti with such finese and style . A book worth reading as history , social evolution and the Lost Paradise we look for in Religion ( Is Not There , Believe Me ) . By the way , if U want to know where Paradise went , read The Story of B , by Daniel Quinn . Enjoy and learn ....

Rating:
Summary: Vargas Llosa shows "The Way to Paradise"
Review: If Mario Vargas Llosa had not lost the election to Alberto Fujimori in the late 1980s and had become president of Peru, it's interesting to imagine how that country would be faring today. What we do know is that the literary world would have missed this writer of intelligent, politically-influenced fiction. With "Feast of the Goat" and now with "The Way to Paradise," Vargas Llosa turns his astute gaze to Europe and the Pacific, and demonstrates that he can write masterfully about cultures and countries other than his own.

In the new book he traces the life of painter Paul Gauguin and his grandmother, the socialist feminist Flora Tristan. Set in France and the South Pacific with a brief sojourn in Peru, he charts the courses of two related people who never knew each other, and whose lives were similar in that they found the conventions of their times impossible to live with.

Flora Tristan grew up in poverty as the illegitimate daughter of a French mother and a Peruvian father. Her marriage was abusive and she escaped her husband to reinvent herself as a popular writer and campaigner for workers' rights. Despite failing health, she tours the small towns of France recruiting members for her Workers' Union. Her grandson Paul abandons his large family and friendship with other painters to escape to Tahiti to paint. Riddled with syphilis, his health is failing as well.

Natasha Wimmer's translation is excellent. There are scenes that glow with the golden light of Arles or sting with the scent of the sea. Where "Paradise" misses the mark is through an irritating literary device where rhetorical questions or comments are made of the characters in the second person: "Was it because of the woman in Panama that your vision was weakened, your heart was failing, and your legs were covered with pustules?" or: "You would later remember those two hours of absurd debate, Florita." You get the idea. It adds nothing to the narrative and is a jarringly false step from such a sure-footed writer.

Rating:
Summary: A Disappointing Book From a Masterful Author
Review: Mario Vargas Llosa is one of my favorite writers and I thought THE FEAST OF THE GOAT was masterful, so I was very eager to read THE WAY TO PARADISE, especially since I love the work of Paul Gauguin. I have to say that I'm shocked that there are so few reviews of this book here. Vargas Llosa is one of the most important writers of the twentieth century and one of Latin America's most important writers of all time.

Although I would have preferred a book about Gauguin only, THE WAY TO PARADISE is made up of narratives that concern themselves with the life of Gauguin and the life of his grandmother, Flora Tristan, the illegitimate daughter of a Peruvian man and a French woman. Gauguin never knew his grandmother (he was born four years after her death) but the two seemed to have shared several traits in common, something Vargas Llosa highlights.

Gauguin's story takes place during the last twelve years of his life, primarily in Tahiti and the Marquesas, though Vargas Llosa does gives us details of the painter's earlier life in flashbacks. If you don't know much about Gauguin going in, you are going to find yourself lost for most of the book. I had read quite a bit about Gauguin before reading this book, but I am sure there will be many readers out there who haven't.

THE WAY TO PARADISE is far from being a biography of Gauguin, which is what I think a lot of readers are going to expect. I liked Vargas Llosa's choice of not giving us a standard biography, but I think he should have placed his flashbacks a little nearer the beginning of the book so readers who didn't know much about the life of Gauguin would feel less disoriented.

We eventually learn about Gauguin's service in the French Navy and his work in the office of a stockbroker. Vargas Llosa touched on the artist's marriage to the Danish woman, Mette Gad and, after she leaves him to return to Denmark, his time in Pont Aven with van Gogh. The time spent with van Gogh comprises some of this book's most compelling reading.

The facts of Gauguin's years in Tahiti will be familiar to some readers and unfamiliar to others. I think, if one is not at all familiar with Gauguin and still wants to read THE WAY TO PARADISE, he or she would do well to read a standard biography of Gauguin first. I've heard some criticism of Vargas Llosa's writing in the sections depicting Gauguin's years in Tahiti as being "too flamboyant." Personally, I liked the writing style and thought it fit the subject matter perfectly.

I didn't care for Flora Tristan's story even though she was an interesting woman and a woman well ahead of her time. She was also a much more sympathetic character (at least in this book) than was Gauguin, who wasn't sympathetic at all. I simply wasn't looking for a book that concerned Gauguin's grandmother; I was looking for a book that concerned Gauguin.

Flora Tristan was a woman who, by the age of forty, had already lived a very difficult life. These difficulties, however, certainly didn't lead her into self-pity. Instead, she wrote a little booklet, "The Workers' Union" and became a social reformer, concentrating her efforts primarily on France's working class. I found much that was interesting in the story of Flora Tristan, but I also found it somewhat repetitive and, eventually, boring.

A very interesting section of Flora's story takes place, however, when she decides to go to Arequipa, Peru (the birthplace of Vargas Llosa, by the way), to visit her uncle, Don Pio Tristan. She is treated well by her Peruvian relatives and is made to feel welcome in their home, but she doesn't get what she came after-her share of her father's inheritance. And, being illegitimate, there really is nothing she can do about it. In the Peruvian section, Vargas Llosa's writing style is more baroque and convoluted, something I really liked.

I found the last two chapters, which portray the deaths of Flora Tristan and Paul Gauguin, harrowing and heartbreaking, despite my lack of interest in Flora and the almost despicable way in which Gauguin was portrayed. Flora was a woman who suffered much heartbreak in her life and Gauguin, despite his faults, was a tortured soul. Neither deserved the suffering they endured.

Even had I been interested in Flora Tristan (and don't get me wrong, she is an extremely interesting woman), I still wouldn't have liked THE WAY TO PARADISE for two reasons. First, it seems as though Vargas Llosa was trying to marry political ambition to artistic fervor in showing us the very different roads these two people took to what they perceived as "paradise." For me, that marriage just didn't work. Second, and this is the most important reason I didn't care for the book, is the style. As long as Vargas Llosa stayed in the third person, I found his writing as masterful as ever. But he inserts himself as a second person questioner throughout the book and this, at least to me, got to be very, very annoying. I'm certainly not questioning Vargas Llosa's choices here; he's far too masterful a writer for me to do that. I'm just saying that this technique didn't work at all well for me and I disliked it very much. For me, it got in the way of the stories of Flora and Gauguin and caused the book to be less than seamless.

Despite my reservations about THE WAY TO PARADISE, I think anyone interested in Gauguin, or anyone interested in keeping up on the writing of Mario Vargas Llosa, should read this book. You might be like me and find that you don't like it quite as well as you expected to, but there's no doubt that it's an important book, from a very important author.

If you're new to Vargas Llosa (you shouldn't be), I would begin with DEATH IN THE ANDES or THE WAR OF THE END OF THE WORLD, a book that is quite complex and baroque, but one that is, I think, Vargas Llosa's masterpiece to date.

Rating:
Summary: A Tale of Two Impossible Paradises
Review: Where Vargas Llosa simply shines, again, is in the very telling of these lives, his writing continues to mature becoming so much its own and, at the same time, achieving such transparence that the reader is left to be with the novel's characters, Paul Gauguin and Flora Tristan, without an overwhelming author's voice to guide her or him -something that even great writers could find so easy to indulge in.
Whether biographical accuracy is respected or not, it is truly irrelevant. This is a novel, and it is free to ponder on more important things than that.
This is the story of human beings, almost a century apart, facing their own forms of finding paradise, perhaps the kind of paradise that Arthur Rimbaud called "Christmas on earth," if not bliss, a certain peace that can only come after giving yourself over to the vision where desire may reign without stifling moral constrains or the vision of a society where its moral principle is justice. Flora and Paul, in their own circumstances, are devoted to seeing the glory of their visions which they long for, and suffer from, all their lives.
For Flora it's the restless fight for having women finally considered peers to men. Her body agonizing exhausted with the little progress that her words can manage even among leaders of Utopian groups.
For Gauguin it is painting nothing less than epiphany after epiphany, following a God who created and blesses the most essential ways of life. For him, this is what he travels to the Pacific Islands for. He's a Christian longing to be a "savage" -this is longing that has become his form of agony.
It is interesting that both bodies suffer greatly from what their souls pursue. Also, one can conclude that, if these two ever met they would likely be at odds with each other, fail to see anything but an enemy before them.
These are not people to be liked or cherished necessarily, specially Gauguin, yet they are to be understood for the genuine tenor of their passions, loved enough to have them teach you their own truths.
Vargas Llosa, like Coetzee or Kundera, continues to deepen his craft and chance his reputation to pushing the boundaries of contemporary fiction, so willing these days to hail formulas. This alone, is remarkable.
Please, read this novel and be enriched by Flora Tristan, by Paul Gauguin, and even more profoundly, by Mario Vargas Llosa.