Readers aware of La traición de Rita Hayworth and El beso de la mujer araña will find similar sexual and political considerations in [Pubis angelical]. Mexico City is the setting; the female Argentine protagonist Ana, who is in a hospital there, suffers the psychological and political repercussions of having experienced most of her life in contemporary Argentina. The substance of the novel consists of her discussions with two other characters concerning this past, her diary and her private fantasies.
Puig has employed his now standard formal construction: sixteen chapters divided into two equal parts. The development of Ana's series of conversations is chronological, providing a general structural unity. Most chapters, however, contain brief narratives seemingly unrelated to her immediate circumstance; they take place in a variety of times and places: elegant and nostalgic Vienna, Mexico of the 1930s and 40s, a plastic futuristic twenty-first century. The novel opens with one of these fantasy sections; they appear regularly throughout it, and three chapters are entirely such narratives. They can be read as Ana's projections of worlds she has been unable to find in her past, or perhaps as ideal escapes from the harsh reality that surrounds her. The traditional sex roles played out in these sections exemplify ideals articulated by Ana in her dialogue and diary. The activization of the reader in the process of integrating these narratives is one of the novel's successful and attractive features.
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