What is a Novelist to Do?

 I will read anything by Mario Vargas Llosa. You search this blog for my other posts on Llosa. From LitHub, I saw the link for Mario Vargas Llosa on Looking Back, a Novel of Never-Ending War That Resists Easy Answers. That I read does not mean I do not skim a book review, and I did not think of a blog post until I came down to the last two paragraphs.

There is no reason for a novel to replace its readers, offering easy solutions, freeing them from the task of reflection and deciding for themselves what they might do if forced to contend with the same dilemmas. Fortunately, both Sergio and Marianela are alive, and Sergio has given his all to his career as a filmmaker. But after all she survived during her singular education, the fate of Marianela leaves me in terrified suspense.

Does she feel that she fulfilled her mission? Is she happy with herself? Or perhaps frustrated? It’s impossible to tell by reading this exceptional novel. But that is where the invisible work that its pages leave in our memory begins. What would you have done in her shoes? Would you have turned back, or persevered? How far would you go? Until when? Until you turned the whole world into a flaming meteor from which nothing and no one can escape? Good novels do not provide easy answers; it is the job of readers whose sensitivity is awakened by what is imagined there to know how to respond. The author of these outstanding pages can be satisfied that his work is done.

 Part of my campaign against a saccharine sentimentality has led me away from happy endings. For one of my novels, I think no one noticed the husband and wife would have to be dead for the novel to exist.

So, loose ends serve their purpose. I will take that as the lesson of the day.

sch 9/23/22