(.) It's riveting stuff, beautifully written wild, exact, and visually stunning. " The Way to Paradise weaves an extraordinarily rich double fantasia around Gauguin's life, strenuously explores qualities in the works, and sets the moral issues in a far wilder, more real historical world.Here, the visionary painter of paradise emerges as a misunderstood genius of the kind it takes a genius such as Vargas Llosa to understand." - Alfred Hickling, The Guardian But it offers a welcome corrective to the image of Gauguin as the dashing savage who casually gave birth to modern art on a beach. Even a novelist of Vargas Llosa's powers has difficulty leavening this material sufficiently - The Way To Paradise can feel pretty purgatorial at times. "Tristan and Gauguin never met in real life and their stories do not so much coalesce as challenge each other in their descent to ever greater depths of disillusion and misery.And both found inspiration far from France, in less formal and less developed societies." - The Economist Both gave up the possibility of bourgeois comfort in pursuit of an ideal, of radical social reform in one case and of art in the other. The implicit thesis is that the two protagonists are linked by more than just kinship. The author's imagination is hard at work. Some readers may wonder whether this is really fiction.
But, as one has come to expect from Mr Vargas Llosa, the book is meticulously researched and cleverly crafted. "It lacks the tense drama of his last effort.The Way to Paradise is more streamlined, more satisfying and, in the questions it begs about life, art and ambition, genuinely stimulating." - David Robson, Daily Telegraph His last novel, The Feast of the Goat, was an equally ambitious story, set in the Dominican Republic. "Llosa is enjoying something of an Indian summer as a writer.
And, such is Vargas Llosa mastery of his art, the resulting book is both funny and pathetic, and full of surprises despite its foreordained conclusion." - Roger Kaplan, Commentary "It is fascinating to watch as Vargas Llosa’s two characters insist on accomplishing their missions - if they do not usher in an earthly paradise, at least they will die with the bittersweet satisfaction of having caught a glimpse of it.Not quite a consensus, but most impressed, enthusiastic Spanish title: El paraíso en la otra esquinaī : interesting lives, rather awkward presentation.
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