That's the continuation of the novel "Praise of the Stepmother" where we find the same characters. Don Rigoberto and Dona Lucrecia are separated, although they still love each other. Don Rigoberto brings Dona Lucrecia back to life through her fantasies. Fonchito visits his stepmother and orchestrates a cunning plan to reconcile the two lovers. It is often a question of biographical elements on the painter Egon Schiele and his painting, to which Fonchito dedicates an obsessive cult.
The chapters dedicated to history and to the painter Egon Schiele alternate with those devoted to Don Rigoberto's fantasies and those where Vargas Llosa gives us, in the form of short essays, his vision of freedom, love, and sexuality. He criticizes the current mass society, which enslaves the individual, including his sexuality. It chastises pornography, the fashion for sex toys, orgies, sex without imagination, the imperatives of enjoyment, the concentration on the genitals at the expense of eroticism, and the wealth deployed by the revelation of the multiple erogenous zones of the wife's body. He defends an individualistic, creative, imaginative, joyful, healthy vision of life, love, and sexuality.
This alternation of chapters on various themes at the expense of the romantic plot requires a concentrated, patient, and sometimes a little intellectual reading.
This is a book to read only if you have read "Praise of the Stepmother" beforehand to understand this sequel, but also because the attachment to the characters helps to maintain curiosity.