Word: ana
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Family members and associates of the accused embassy guards insist that military investigators have vastly exaggerated the espionage charges. "They are convinced they've got a major Russian spy on their hands," said one kinsman. "What they've got is a horny Marine." In Santa Ana, Calif., Lawyer Michael Sheldon, who had earlier represented Weirick on a drunk-driving charge, said the accused spy "certainly didn't seem to be a man of great means. He paid his fees on the slow-fee plan. Sometimes he missed a payment...
Pubis Angelical tells three seemingly unconnected stories of three women. They are an enigmatic Austrian-born movie star of the 1940s described only as "the most beautiful woman in the world," a conscripted state prostitute named W218 in a future world reshaped by geological disaster, and Ana, a refugee from Argentina being treated for cancer in Mexico City...
...STORIES of the movie star and of W218 are spun out of fantasy, full of superhuman characters and improbable events; by contrast, Ana is portrayed through her diary entries and conversations as a believable and realistic character, with human proportions and human problems--illness, exile, old lovers. The novel shuttles back and forth between these separate narratives, creating a web of associations and hazy relationships between the three women. But little is revealed to the reader for certain; of this complex interplay we know only that W218 is a descendent of the long-dead movie star, whom she sees...
This unorthodox structure serves as the basis for Puig's considerable technical skill, blending in common themes and elements. Each woman is in some way searching for an ideal man; but while the actress and W218 meet the men of their dreams--in colorfully romantic scenes--Ana can only sigh wistfully...
...intimations of impending revelation. Sometimes the recurring plot elements seem to repetitive, a passionate lover after passionate lover turns out to be a spy; sometimes the exaggerated characters become only tiresome stereotypes. Some passages can be relatively tedious, such as the tired political debates relived over and over in Ana's hospital room the repeated philosophizing on ideal relationships between men and women. Dialogue often tends to be melodramatic...