SOURCE: “No End to the Affair,” in Times Literary Supplement, No. 4657, July 3, 1992, p. 26.

In the following review, Butt lauds Puig's Tropical Night Falling, asserting, “It has a gentle wit that recalls his finest pages, but it also displays a simplicity and lightness of touch which suggest that it could have inaugurated a rich third phase in his writing.”

Unkind reviews almost scuppered Puig's career as a novelist. He had early successes with Betrayed by Rita Hayworth, Heartbreak Tango, The Buenos Aires Affair and Kiss of the Spider Woman, all written before 1977. The signs were that he would carry the triumphs of the Latin-American “boom” to a second generation.

His second phase, including Pubis Angelical, Eternal Curse on the Reader of these Pages and Blood of Requited Love, ran from 1976 to 1982 and was marked by a sharp rise in formal complexity. These novels received mixed notices, the worst of...