The Way to Paradise by Mario Vargas Llosa: book review

The Way to Paradise (2012) is set in France in the 1840s and Tahiti in the 1890s.

The novel begins in 1844 with Florita Tristan, aged 41, in France, with a vision of changing the world. She had travelled from France to Peru to collect her inheritance after her wealthy Peruvian father died. Now she was back in France, about to take a year-long journey throughout the countryside to campaign for better conditions for the poor. She has copies of the book ‘The Workers’ Union’ with her.

Was she crazy, a subversive, an anarchist, a revolutionary? Why would anyone give a part of their salary to be a member of a union? Was she after fame of some sort? No, she wasn’t seeking fame; she was after effectiveness. What she did, she did for others. She dies young, aged 41.

Almost fifty years later, in 1891, Florita’s grandson Paul Tristan, aged 43, is in the French colonial island of Tahiti to imitate the life of Paul Gauguin – he wants to be an artist and to paint his masterpiece. He has abandonned his wife and five children, leaving them in France, to follow his dreams, his freedom, his way to paradise.

Paul takes a Tahitian wife, young Teha’amana, a new name, Koke, and a new life as a bohemian artist. What he did, he did for himself.

Both Florita and Paul have ambitions and passions – obsessions – living unconventional lives to pursue them. They watch their societies change around them – Florita sees social reforms, and Paul sees the European inhabitation of Tahiti. They both want to make a difference in the world – Florita wants to change the world with words, and Paul wants to change the world with art.

Written in the third and second person, it is annoying. For example, ‘When, huddled in her bed at the inn in Avallon, she realized that her eyes were damp … How ashamed you must have felt … A sad state of affairs made her departure easier: the chronic feebleness and constant illnesses of her oldest son, Alexandre, who would die in 1830 a the age of eight.’ It is written in the present, and in the past, and in the future, in a jumble of tenses in one paragraph.

This study of passion, influences, drive, ambition, dealing with success and failure, dealing with illnesses and challenges, and being different in a conservative environment – and the things that happen on the way to paradise (their idea of paradise) – fell slightly short of impactful. Nor did it tie together Florita’s and Paul’s lives effectively. It fell short of having the impact to extend this from a very good story to a great one.

I love the themes, the intent, and the concept of this novel. Therefore, I intend to read more novels by Mario Vargas Llosa, the winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Discreet Hero (2015) will be next.

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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