The Discreet Hero - O Herói Discreto

The Discreet Hero is a book from 2013, translated to English in 2015. The writer, Mario Vargas Llosa won the Nobel prize for literature in 2010.

In The Discreet Hero, the protagonist Felício Yanaqué lives his life according to his father's last teaching “Do not let anyone step into you.” as a way to honor his memory. But life is tricky and Felício's principles will be put to the test.

An unconventional hero, without the dramatic overtones of the movies, but filled with honor, Felício is a real-life hero, those who no one will never know about. Yet, they can proudly shape their own destiny, with honesty. Our protagonist fights against the status quo, which he thinks is wrong, and never gives up, although, the world around him keeps saying that this is the rule.

But Felício is not the only hero in this book. Along with its pages, we can read two different storylines, unrelated at first, but in the end, they will share a fate.

The main conflicts arise inside the characters, most of them very introspective during the whole story.

In The Discreet Hero, we see a series of complicated family relationships where the reader is confronted with the differences between two generations. One, a generation of hard workers, who fought all life to have what they own now and the other, their spoiled sons who never had to fight for anything and who believe it's their right to have anything they want.

The focus of the book is on loyalty and ethics (which the characters may or may not have) and the romance isn't centered in crazy young love, but in the maturity of the years and in the calm passion of difference.

Comments

Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes

This is not the sort of show which I usually talk about on this blog. However, as a psychologist, I’m usually quite curious in regards to criminals and their minds; and one of these days I started watching this documentary on Netflix . Taking into consideration the kind of thing this is, I can’t say I ‘liked’ it. I mean what you see in there is nothing to like, but I was rather terrified, which is probably the usual response. Nonetheless, it was definitely a good documentary. The eyes of a killer Everything displayed in this story was terrible. The descriptions, Bundy’s posture, everything seemed like some sort of horror show, putting into perspective what we may consider to be lucky or unlucky in this life. Before I even start watching it, I read somewhere that this was the kind of thing you shouldn’t watch alone. Sounds accurate right now. At the time, and considering my, mostly academic, experience, I didn’t think that this could actually be so upsetting.

The Mist (2017) - quick review

A thick mist falls up a town, and something about it isn’t right - good premise. We would expect nothing less than good from a Stephen King’s book. Yet, as we all know, book adaptations can be quite disappointing. It goes from good to terrible. I loved the plot and, in the beginning, I was very curious and interested - it was almost impossible to stop watching it. Yet, at some point, it started to get on my nerves, and not in the way that a good horror show should. As we got closer to the end of the season, many things stopped making sense. Some characters are simply… not believable. The explanations for whatever was happening were ridiculous and easily refutable. It all took away the feeling of “this could be real”. It killed my interest. Many changes were made to the original novel. Some of them were interesting and made the story better, yet others were… well, nonsense. Cast and production As I said before, the first episodes were good and made us want to keep watching, but I was

Show Review: Emily in Paris

It took me a long time to give Emily in Paris a shot because I thought it would be a silly, shallow comedy about some sort of influencer. Well, it is a silly, shallow comedy about some sort of influencer, but to be honest, I liked it. Emily is a young talent in a marketing career and has the opportunity of her life: working in Paris for a year! And since her boyfriend is an idiot, she can try the full experience of being a single woman in the city of love. Unfortunately, she is not as good at managing her personal life as she is at work. In fact, she is frankly terrible at making decisions outside work. Cultural Differences Everyone who has been in a foreign country knows that sometimes we get ourselves into awkward situations due to cultural differences. So watching someone else go through the same is quite funny. I must admit that seeing an American trying to speak French is hilarious. Of course, I’m not French (and French people who hear me trying to speak French could have a s

All Forms of Art

Search This Blog