The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Tarzan's Tonsillitis by Alfredo Bryce Echenique
Gregory Howard

Alfredo Bryce Echenique. Tarzan’s Tonsillitis. Trans. Alfred MacAdam. Pantheon, 2001. 262 pp. $23.00

Though a good portion of it is narrated through letters, Tarzan’s Tonsillitis is much more one man’s Bernhardian rambling monologue than epistolary love story. Its narrator would have you believe different, however, and this creates the tension that drives the novel. Juan Manual Carpio, a Peruvian singer-songwriter, narrates the history of his thirty-year love affair with Fernanda María de la Trinidad del Monte Montes, a Salvadoran, whom he meets in 1960s Paris, where they are both a part of the expatriate Boom crowd. Theirs is a star-crossed affair: he, mooning over his absent wife when they first meet, is unable to reciprocate her feelings; she, though still in love with him, marries, has children, and moves back to El Salvador. In his narration Juan Manuel often explains events before presenting Fernanda’s letters, which at first bear him out. He also jumps through time and into other characters’ heads, speaking at and to himself, often in long, wonderfully convoluted sentences. These twisting digressions (beautifully translated by Alfred MacAdam) are the first clue that there might be an ulterior motive in Juan Manuel’s song. As the novel progresses, small discrepancies emerge between the narration and Fernanda’s letters. The clarity, emotion, and candor of Fernanda’s words puncture the narration’s verbal acrobatics. The two voices play off of each other, often contrasting, but also, significantly, harmonizing. For just when the reader begins to wonder if the love affair is mostly a creation of Juan Manuel’s mind, a letter from Fernanda will affirm his version of the events. But in the end this is a solo, not a duet-a vain attempt, in reliving the past, to correct past mistakes, to choose what was not and should have been chosen, and ultimately to accept the loss of a lover and the love of a friend. [Gregory Howard]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Tarzan's Tonsillitis by Alfredo Bryce Echenique Gregory Howard Alfredo Bryce Echenique. Tarzan’s Tonsillitis. Trans. Alfred MacAdam. Pantheon, 2001. 262 pp. $23.00 Though a good portion of it is narrated through letters, Tarzan’s Tonsillitis is much more one man’s Bernhardian rambling monologue than epistolary love story. Its narrator would have you believe different, however, and this creates the tension that drives the novel. Juan Manual Carpio, a Peruvian singer-songwriter, narrates the history of his thirty-year love affair with Fernanda María de la Trinidad del Monte Montes, a Salvadoran, whom he meets in 1960s Paris, where they are both a part of the expatriate Boom crowd. Theirs is a star-crossed affair: he, mooning over his absent wife when they first meet, is unable to reciprocate her feelings; she, though still in love with him, marries, has children, and moves back to El Salvador. In his narration Juan Manuel often explains events before presenting Fernanda’s letters, which at first bear him out. He also jumps through time and into other characters’ heads, speaking at and to himself, often in long, wonderfully convoluted sentences. These twisting digressions (beautifully translated by Alfred MacAdam) are the first clue that there might be an ulterior motive in Juan Manuel’s song. As the novel progresses, small discrepancies emerge between the narration and Fernanda’s letters. The clarity, emotion, and candor of Fernanda’s words puncture the narration’s verbal acrobatics. The two voices play off of each other, often contrasting, but also, significantly, harmonizing. For just when the reader begins to wonder if the love affair is mostly a creation of Juan Manuel’s mind, a letter from Fernanda will affirm his version of the events. But in the end this is a solo, not a duet-a vain attempt, in reliving the past, to correct past mistakes, to choose what was not and should have been chosen, and ultimately to accept the loss of a lover and the love of a friend. [Gregory Howard]

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