SOURCE: Angier, Carole. “The Purest Pornography There Is.” Spectator 281, no. 8868 (25 July 1998): 32.

In the following review, Angier asserts that, despite Vargas Llosa's skillful prose, The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto is merely a work of literary “pornography.”

When is pornography not pornography? When it is well written, Mario Vargas Llosa said in a recent interview. That is tempting the gods, or at least the reviewers. Is The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto well written? Is that enough to stop it from being pornography? And does it matter if it is? The answers are yes, no and yes.

Vargas Llosa's arrogance is justified (but arrogance generally is; if not it's something else, delusion or pretension). He writes well, and has done so ever since Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter 20 years ago. In fact, he has never written better than that. Only one thing has ever happened to him: falling in love with...