Weekly “what are you reading” Thread #44

To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks and papers.

I'm currently about to finish Cortázar Los Premios (The Winners).

So this group or Argies are on board of a ship called “Malcolm”. They're told on the second day the Malcolm is heading to Japan and that the Stern is quarantined due to a Typhus outbreak, and that the captain himself is sick. Most passengers think that's bullshit and one of them, Carlos López (a high school teacher) wants to make use of force (they have a couple of guns lmao) to pass through the officers as they wont let them telegraph to Buenos Aires and are held recluse in their part of the ship. Carlos is in love with a crazy redhead, Paula, who's traveling with an architect Raúl, everyone on board thinks they're married (it's set in the late 1950s after all) but they're not, nor are they sleeping together, just sharing the cabin as Raúl is gay. Paula is a pretentious train wreck but a funny character regardless, all the foids on the ship believe she's some nymphomaniac slut who's going after their husbands and sons.

There are some creepy gay themes on the book.

There's Felipe: a 16 year old boy from an upper middle class family, he's López's student (López thinks he's dim witted). Felipe is attracted to Paula who obviously dismisses him as he's just a boy, through his POV we find out one of his best friends at school is either gay of bisexual and that he's a bit attracted to it. The book has too many descriptions of Felipe taking showers, looking himself naked in front of the mirror, describing his pool speedos, etc.

There's Raúl, a closeted homosexual as mentioned before. He lusts for Felipe, on the first meeting with Felipe, the latter tells him that traveling with his parents and sister sucks to which Raúl says: “I wished you were here all alone” at some point Felipe invites Raúl to his cabin then takes a shower with the door open (no homo he thinks) Raúl watches him bath, tells him he has a great body. Then he dresses up and Raúl starts touching his hair to Felipe tells him to stop. Raúl believes Felipe will punch him but instead Felipe is scared as the cabin door is locked and starts crying. Raúl leaves and later tells Paula who's like: “are you crazy? He's just a child!”

Then there's Bob, a sailor, he befriends Felipe, gets him drunk on his cabin and r*pes him.

Other interesting characters are Claudia, a recently divorced woman traveling along her son Jorge and an neurodivergent old friend Persio. Persio has a bunch of soliloquies across the book, typically at the end of a chapter (not all chapters though). Claudia is attracted to Medrano, López's friend, and is also concerned that the whole typhus things is bullshit.

I'm wondering about the end now as the crew of the ship is incredibly hostile and who's behind the whole “crusier lottery” as many if these characters knew each other before winning the tickets (an astonishing coincidence).

!bookworms