Between generations of Vargas Llosa and Santiago Roncagliolo, we found a Alonso Cueto that confirms that fascinating cadence of Peruvian writers of the first international level. Because all of them end up standing out as essential storytellers in Spanish of their time.
In the case of Alonso Cueto, about the profession of writer It came with that point of predestination of someone who academically chooses literature to end up achieving a doctorate. And in this process of study and documentation, Alonso Cueto forged a very personal stamp with diverse inspirations ranging from Henry James to Onetti, with an exhaustive study of these and many other authors.
But the question in the end, for a good writer, is to achieve to manifest that imprint, that mixture between imagination, resources, style and creative will to draw up a very particular bibliography that in the case of Alonso Cueto contains everything and for all kinds of demanding readers.
Top 3 recommended novels by Alonso Cueto
The blue hour
There are hours of all colors and intensities. Yes for Sergio del Molino the violet hour was the most bitter, for Alonso Cueto also a blue hour, close to violet in its color range, supposes a disruption between what should have been, what was "desired" and what was.
The blue hour narrates a break in the almost perfect life of Adrián Ormache, a prestigious lawyer from Lima's upper class who seems to lack anything: no job, no family, no social position.
His perfect picture, however, darkens when his father, a prominent sailor in Ayacucho during the most violent period of the terrorist war unleashed by Shining Path, confesses his biggest secret: the existence of a woman with whom he was in love and with whom he spared his life, Miriam.
Adrián, against all advice and despite the threats he receives, sets out on a journey to find her. The exploration of the past, told to the rhythm of thriller and with a superb handling of suspense, you will discover what kind of soldier your father was, what kind of man he is and what is the country in which they have lived.
The King's Second Mistress
The reasons for heartbreak become the causes of passion. You just have to know how to handle this possible transition in that difficult balance between what is necessary to survive the drives that guide us while reason, morality and customs are settling as routines to which the human clings in search of the immortality of a love that can never be eternal.
But the truth is that you can never stop loving, no matter how much you intuit that orgasm is a reduction to the absurdity of that impossible eternity, despite the fact that your search is a burden between the physiological and the basic patterns towards the perpetuation of the species.
This novel delves into the dichotomous perception of love between Gustavo and Lali. In what ultimately seems more like a story about the different states in which the two parties that agree on eternal love can find themselves.
Then there are the external conditions, the perception of others and the effort to show that the decisions in the most important thing that concerns us, love, are adjusted to the impositions and the normality on which others take refuge from the incipient rain of your own deepest desires.
Because Gustavo and Lali belong to that high social stratum to which each heartbreak is considered a human defeat. And that, for the achievers who have made their lives a success, sounds like the bitterest defeat.
The story is completed with the character of Sonia, who knows that in this dark story of defeated love there are hidden edges that escape common knowledge. And that is where the story takes on a police aspect that ends up revealing the unique and even violent form of love between Gustavo and Lali.
The unanimous consideration of Alonso Cueto as one of the greatest current storytellers in Spanish is ratified once again in this novel with evocations of Milan Kundera in regard to the contradictions of the human being and Henry James in the brilliant contribution of the stories Narrated from within, give that book that the characters seem to write as if a reader could read directly about the human soul.
The perricholi
It is always interesting to know about the true heroes of history. Or at least about personalities that end up standing out with a point of heroism towards survival, taking the world for a hunt.
Because the perricholi was that heroine who, in her own way, liberated and unleashed, contributed to women's liberation. She took steps forward repudiated even by other women. But thanks to his iconoclastic spirit, his extreme way of facing life and his courage, his example served in the depths of consciences and still serves today, as an example.
Who was Micaela Villegas? The actress who shone at the Comedy Coliseum? The lover who starred with Viceroy Amat in one of the most controversial love stories of the XNUMXth century in Peru? The mestizo beauty that shook the foundations of Lima society of its time, unleashing hatred, flattery and envy?
The pious woman who knelt in front of a parish priest to confess her sins? The wayward accused of immorality? The mother who raised her child with proud love? Or the rebellious who knew how to exchange an insult in the name with which she became famous: the Perricholi?
These and other questions run through the plot of this novel that recreates the challenging life of Micaela Villegas, set between the last years of the Peruvian viceroyalty and the dawn of Independence.
Narrated with a style of short, plastic and enveloping sentences that give speed and vigor to the prose, this exciting novel by Alonso Cueto uses historical research and the mechanisms of fiction to explore, without overshadowing its mystery, the indomitable heart by Micaela Villegas: la Perricholi. Queen of Lima.
