Book Review.
In 1997 The Mexican Jose Emilio Pacheco
wrote the book “El principio del placer” (the principles of pleasure) . This
writer was named one of the major Mexican Poets at the end of the 20th
century. Pacheco was also essayist, novelist and a short story writer. This recognized writer has won a lot of prizes
such as “Premio Cervantes” in 2009 ( the most important award in Spanish
literature) ,and “National Prize of literature” 2000.
This writer is beloved because of his
simplicity and category work.
Also one Café Tacuba song (Colombian
band) was influenced by Jose Emilio Pacheco’s novel “ Las batallas en el
desierto”.
“ El Principio del placer “ is a diary
written by a little 8 years old boy called Jorge, whose family is at a fairly
high socioeconomic level. His dad is a military and his mom and 2 sisters are
very conservative. They are living in the years after the second world war, when
the new technological changes started out.
For the first time Jorge felt in love
with his sisters friend Ana, who did not have a lot of money and she worked at
a factory for a living. He wrote in his diary how pretty Ana was, and all the
feelings he had for her . But there was a little problem; Ana was too poor to
be dating to someone as Jorge. So he has to keep the love in secret, dating her
in places where noone would see them. Only his driver. Duran, knows about this
adventure, doing him favors so he could be with Ana without any interruptions,
and his family wouldn’t realize. After a few months of secret love, something
between them happens, and he realizes love doesn’t exist.
This great story gives the reader a
nice entertainment moment of reading. Involving the reader in a young love
story from one child who is discovering love for first time.
The authors language is easy to
understand making it easy to read.
The writings structure makes the book
not that boring, fluid and weary to read. That gives the reader the facility to
read without stopping.
What makes the book more interesting is
all the historical context the author uses. It draws a whole picture of the
late 1950’s in Mexico on the reader.
The genre of the story, its not only
romantic, it also is, a comedy and a suspense novel, so different type of
people can read it without disliking it.
What makes the novel a comedy is how
Ana writes, with a lot of misspellings and colloquial language. This way, the
author gives the reader a bigger panorama of the story and more details about
how the characters are.
The book only has one disadvantage; it
is only 20 pages length. That gives the reader the necessity to read more about
the young boys life.
