Title: In Praise of the Stepmother
Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
Pub Date: 1990
Read: Feb 2011
Purchased: no, borrowed from the library
Why: I’ve been sort of interested in reading this — the library seemed like a low-risk way to approach it
Fulfills Challenge? Yes.
Notes: This is my first Vargas Llosa novel, but I promise I was interested in it before he won the Nobel. If I were reading him for that reason, I probably would’ve gone with something more political and “important”
Review/Thoughts:
I am so glad I chose to borrow this instead of buying it. First, a disclaimer: I am not bothered by consensual incest. I feel the need to put that out there immediately because many people who had a problem with this book seem to have a problem with the incest aspect. That is not why I disliked the book. A bigger issue than the stepmother/stepchild for me is the age difference (the child in question is a mere 10 or 11 years old). As it turns out however (major spoiler alert!), it is the child who is the manipulative little shit, and though as an adult, the stepmother should not have behaved as she did, the child set her up.
Vargas Llosa is clearly an excellent writer — his prose sings and he makes mundane tasks sound like poetry. As such, I’d definitely be willing to give some of his other works a chance. I was not in love with this novel because so much of it was taken up by 1) the daily ritual of washing, 2) these fantasies that place the main characters inside famous paintings. The latter was not wholly uninteresting and Vargas Llosa’s ability to inject telling information into both is remarkable but honestly, I was more interested in the actual plot. One moment the stepmother is resisting her stepson’s advances, the next she’s in bed with him with no real in between or explanation as to why she finally acquiesced. I would have loved to see some of the scenes between her and the child and her and her husband fleshed out more. The “fleshing out” if it can even be called that occurs in the fantasies incorporating the paintings, but I found this to be more frustrating than anything else.
It’s not a bad book, and I wouldn’t really recommend against it, but I would probably issue a warning/disclaimer first.
Final Verdict: 
For less frustrating family loving, I’d suggest Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. Technically the MC and his Aunt aren’t related by blood. But Vargas Llosa’s book is about a lot more than that relationship, with the same poetic voice.
Thank you for the suggestion! Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter has always interested me so I’ll definitely check that one out at some point :D