Book the Eight!
El Beso de la Mujer Araña by Manuel Puig
I thought I would use this book for the 'Located in your state/country or written by a local author''s square. But then I remembered that there is a movie based on this book. Bad, yes, but nowhere does it say that the movie has to honour the book, so...
I'm going to be honest here, this is a rereading. I read this book for the first time when I was a teenager, and it's still as wonderful now as it was then. Terrible, of course, but one of those stories that leave a mark in your soul.
Molina and Valentín are, in a certain way, archetypal characters of the Buenos Aires landscape of that time. Valentin, the political idealist fighter, who tries to harden himself, but who in the end is desperately naive, and Molinita, the "loca" (trans) who dreams of a man who will reign over her while finds escape in the cinema, are not as different as in the first instance it would seem.
Two prisoners, one political, the other detained for 'corruption of minors' (code for homosexuality at that dreadful time) passing the time, while one of them recounts for the other one old movies. Two human beings, connecting in hell...
Treason by duplicate, something that seems love, a hopeless hope and death, always close in those times, always closer than they thought.
This entry was originally posted at https://birggitt.dreamwidth.org/233753.html. Please comment here or there using OpenID.
I thought I would use this book for the 'Located in your state/country or written by a local author''s square. But then I remembered that there is a movie based on this book. Bad, yes, but nowhere does it say that the movie has to honour the book, so...
I'm going to be honest here, this is a rereading. I read this book for the first time when I was a teenager, and it's still as wonderful now as it was then. Terrible, of course, but one of those stories that leave a mark in your soul.
Molina and Valentín are, in a certain way, archetypal characters of the Buenos Aires landscape of that time. Valentin, the political idealist fighter, who tries to harden himself, but who in the end is desperately naive, and Molinita, the "loca" (trans) who dreams of a man who will reign over her while finds escape in the cinema, are not as different as in the first instance it would seem.
Two prisoners, one political, the other detained for 'corruption of minors' (code for homosexuality at that dreadful time) passing the time, while one of them recounts for the other one old movies. Two human beings, connecting in hell...
Treason by duplicate, something that seems love, a hopeless hope and death, always close in those times, always closer than they thought.
This entry was originally posted at https://birggitt.dreamwidth.org/233753.html. Please comment here or there using OpenID.