The upper-middle-class Peruvian family of In Praise of the Stepmother is an affluent and congenial group.

While the novel takes place exclusively within the confines of the family home in Lima, it is clear that they enjoy a seemingly normal relationship with the outside world: business associates, friends, and school. Don Rigoberto, the head of the household, is the manager of an insurance company. A widower, he marries Lucrecia, a forty-year-old divorcee. Dona Lucrecia enjoys the fruits of her privileged lifestyle; during the day she directs the household staff, goes shopping, plays bridge, and attends to the care of Don Rigoberto's son, the angelic looking Alfonso, a prepubescent boy of indeterminate age.

At night, she partakes of her husband's rich sexual rituals and fantasies and is a passive yet willing partner to his imaginative sensual flights of fancy and constant experimentation.

Dona Lucrecia, a warm, sensual...