To The Last Page

I don’t know about eternal damnation, but terminal boredom is certainly a possibility for anyone reading these pages. Maldición eterna a quien lea estas páginas is written entirely as a series of dialogues between two men – and there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s a method often used by Puig, extensively and effectively in Kiss of the Spiderwoman , and like that novel there is an intriguing relationship that develops between two men of different walks of life. In Maldición eterna , an old man in exile from political persecution in Argentina, Ramirez, recuperating in a New York hospital with shattered memories of the past, encounters and forms a friendship with a New York carriage driver, Larry, who has been hired to show him around the city. Although a driver, Larry is an educated man, but he also keeps his troubled past hidden or wrapped in a web of falsification. After the initial set-up however, the novel’s dialogues become rather baffling, some of them hallucinated by the sick ol...