SOURCE: Foster, David William. Review of The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto, by Mario Vargas Llosa. Review of Contemporary Fiction 18, no. 3 (fall 1998): 233.

In the following review, Foster offers a positive assessment of The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto, calling the novel “a masterful exploration of the abyss of erotic endeavors.”

Erotic fiction in Latin America remains confined to the margins of cultural production. While the reader may find strategically placed erotic encounters in “mainline” fiction, the idea of focusing a work on the erotic is still not widely appreciated. [The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto] is a notable exception: a masterful exploration of the abyss of erotic endeavors. Such explorations constitute an abyss in that, by challenging the conventional morality that narrowly circumscribes them—and the genius of conventional morality is that a modicum of sexual life is constantly transgressing it—one must live with the constant panic of the loss...