Book review: The Neighbourhood, by Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize winner, also long ago the Neil Gunn (Visiting) Fellow here in Scotland, has written novels of high intelligence, invention and moral complexity. The Neighbourhood can’t be said to match his best work, or indeed come close to it. No great surprise there, and no dishonour either. He was born in 1936. Most of us are past our best well before we are old. If you don’t look for a masterpiece here, you will find a fast-moving crime novel, with an erotic sub-plot – a novel which also offers a searing picture of political corruption and brutality in his native Peru. Like most good novelists, he is also good on weather; at times you may feel you are trapped in misty, heavily-polluted Lima.