Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman consists almost entirely of several long dialogues between two Argentinian prisoners: Molina, a movie lover who is incarcerated basically for being gay; and Valentin, a political revolutionary. Molina passes the time by retelling the stories of his favorite films; Valentin, if I remember correctly, just stresses out. They develop an odd friendship in the shadow of an oppressive prosecution.

I think I'm just too low brow to enjoy this kind of stuff.The novel relies solely on the strength of its dialogue (see here for a sample page), but the discussions between Molina and Valentin are pretty boring. In particular, they lack any sense of direction or purpose: I could care less what they were discussing, or why. This aimlessness may be an accurate reflection of the ramblings of prisoners, but it doesn't make for a scintillating read.

My low opinion of the translation--or of Puig's writing, I'm not sure who's to blame--doesn't help. Translated fiction always seems to me to have an odd, stilted quality to it. (Cf. my review of Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.) It's as though, in an attempt to be faithful to the original text, the translator loses something of its spirit.

Kiss of the Spider Woman does reach a few high points, all of which have to do with Molina's obsession with movies. A significant proportion of the novel is taken up with his rapturous summaries of various (fictional) films. Too often, these summaries are heavy-handed or just plain weird (panther woman, anyone?). At their best, however, they're a lot of fun: take, for instance, the creepy film about a woman who ends up on an island filled with zombies. It's too bad when Molina's best tale-spinning ends, and you're plonked back into the rest of the book.

Copyright © 2006 Steven Wu