The Bad Girl

The Bad Girl by Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa is a saucy, dysfunctional love story. And honestly, who doesn't love that, especially when it involves someone else's life?

The book starts out in the 60s and spans through the 80s of and on-and-off love affair between the saint-like good boy and the materialistic bad girl, taking place in Peru, Spain, but mainly in Paris.

The novel more than makes up for it's heady Peruvian revolutionary ideas with plenty of sensual love scenes. Though Ricardo, who provides the narrative, goes through a roller coaster ride with the bad girl over decades of her literally cuming and going, I found the story touching and endearing.

Apparently, The Bad Girl, has a similar storyline to Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, which I just download for FREE from Amazon on my kindle app for droid. I am going to read it, to see if The Bad Girl is a blatant rip off of the 1856 novel. The book was considered obscene at the time it came out, so who knows, I may even enjoy it.

While the relationship between Ricardito and the Bad Girl is one, I would never want to be in myself, I highly enjoyed reading about their cyclical attractions and repulsions, which are akin to what it must be like to split an atom.

I found myself talking to the Bad Girl, "Noooooo, don't leeeeeeeeeave. Why can't you be happy with a nice guy? That gangster is just going to make you his sex slave."

But, alas, she never listened to me.

My heart ached and I shed tears for the ever loyal Ricardito, who was the Bad Girl's personal yo-yo. Ricardo never knew what to expect next from the Bad Girl, who reinvented herself, more times than Madonna.

While the Bad Girl is oh so bad, she is likeable, not unlike a stray animal who longs for connection, yet never gets close enough to be touched. She has many redeeming qualities, in and out of the bedroom, though her free spirit causes her to take flight and not necesarily to greener pastures.

Oh Bad Girl, why you gotta be so bad?