Genre: Autofiction
Description:
I make no apology
for importing this description of the book more or less verbatim from Amazon. (On
other indie sites the description is more colourful than this.) If you want to
know how to write a book description, this is a first rate example. But then,
you’d need to write a book that made pretty wild claims …
“In this contemporary
twist on real historical events, Aragón masterfully weaves together a
thought-provoking story like nothing we have ever read before… An affair. A
murder. And Laylah Aragón. Those are the pieces of the puzzle that made
headlines six years ago. We heard the stories, the rumors and the countless
conflicting eyewitness testimonies. We know that Laylah Aragón, a talented
executive speechwriter, is tangled up in more ways than one in the scandal of
the century. But no one knows what really happened. Now, amidst a puzzling turn
of events, the mysterious Laylah Aragón has finally broken her silence. In this
captivating and unexpected first hand account, we get sucked into the twists
and turns of Laylah Aragón’s world, as the lines blur between truth-telling and
survival, and she finally tells her side of the story.”
Hooky,
isn’t it?
Author:
Laylah Aragón
is the author of The Pope’s Mistress trilogy. Where this
book sits in the trilogy isn’t revealed. If the two others are already
published, I couldn’t find them. Aragón is a Cuban/Mexican-American Southern
California native, a graduate of Mills College, a resident of New York City,
and a committed vegan. Her books have themes of environmentalism, feminism,
sexual liberation, and social progress.
Appraisal:
This is an unusual book: I like unusual.
Although it is not, perhaps, as unusual as it thinks it is. It is quite
difficult to review, as almost any discussion of the plot would result in
massive spoilers. This is a gnomic approach to novel writing, where much is
apparently happening, and yet almost nothing is revealed.
The success of this book depends on the
hooky description (above). You read the book because of the hook. You wait for
that great title and that great description to deliver. You wait a long time. You
have been promised that the Pope has a mistress. Popes shouldn’t have
mistresses, how is this all going to come together? Is it true? Any of it? All
of it?
While we wait for the book to get going we
are in the unrelieved company of Aragón, protagonist and author. Fortunately, Aragón
writes well. Her (many) opinions are interesting; her philosophy (of which
there is a lot) stays the right side of von Daniken ramblings; her quotidian
doings are sufficiently entertaining to keep the reader interested; the work
she does as a scriptwriter-cum-prompt for an important corporation is
beautifully set out. After the intriguing opening chapter, the mildly
interesting pages turn well enough. And one knows it is all building up
to something amazing. But it takes its own sweet time to get there.
For 90% of the book one follows Aragón’s breathless
25-hour-a-day life from Los Angeles to New York to Rome and back again. We get
into every cab with her, eat every meal with her, know what she is wearing and
why, how she likes to sleep, how she apparently has pegue (apparently a
kind of empathy). On display are her enthusiasm for life, the way she controls
her own destiny and follows her own moral code. This continues from the moment
she is picked up in a Los Angeles sex club by Marco until she arrives back from
Rome about a week after the adventure begins. After a while it all gets a bit
claustrophobic.
Almost the whole plot is concentrated in the
final 10% of the book, and I have to say I found much of it incomprehensible. I
have searched back and forth through my Kindle, looking for the links which
would enable me to make sense of what happens, and the characters who have
become suddenly important but whom I cannot place. But it did not all come together,
for me, even with work.
I was fully engaged until the Big Reveal. And
I do feel, as a reader, somewhat cheated by what happens (or, rather, doesn’t
happen) in Rome. Perhaps the secret of The Pope’s Mistress is so dangerous
that, even now, Aragón dare not tell all? And this is why the end is a muddle.
Buy now
from: Amazon US Amazon UK
Format/Typo
Issues:
No significant issues.
Rating: ***
Reviewed
by: Judi Moore
Approximate word count: 80-85,000 words
No comments:
Post a Comment