[ book tip by Annika Brown ] Imagine you’re in the darkness in an unknown location, eavesdropping on two voices without knowing whose they are, and being left to your own devices to figure the whole story out – that’s what happened to me when I started reading this book. But then, slowly a very original and unsentimental love story began to unravel before me.

I was utterly fascinated by the clever way in which I was made an active participant in the construction of the narrative: this novel hasn’t got any unifying narrative voice, instead it is a 'bricolage', a patchwork of different elements made up mainly of dialogue, but also of Hollywood movies, popular songs, of letters, lists, footnotes, dreams and more.

While we’re being given rich details of the Hollywood movies that are being retold, we are only being slowly drip-fed information about the actual setting and circumstances of the two main characters. Bit by bit it is revealed that we are in a prison cell with the homosexual Molina who, sentenced for the corruption of minors, is telling the cynical political detainee Valentine, stories from popular movies to help him sleep. They couldn’t be much more different, but, isolated in their small universe they gradually begin to develop a relationship, a relationship that defies all the rules and regulations of society and eventually strengthens and transforms them.

Written against the background of the political instability and oppression in the Argentina of the 60s and 70s, the novel brilliantly uses its cinematic power to evoke the atmosphere of fear and repression; the low-budget Hollywood films acting as modern fairy tales in a world in which reality is too grim to endure. Puig proves that he dares to be what he calls 'vulgar', but he does so in a deeply profound way.

[ book info ] Puig, Manuel: Kiss of the Spiderwoman. (original language: English (translation)) Arena, 1986 (1976). ISBN: 0099342006.