The Good Conscience

Image:  http://www.raptisrarebooks.com/pages/books/502/carlos-fuentes/the-good-conscience

Veronica Rivera

Language : Spanish

Title: Las Buenas Conciencias (The Good Conscience)

 Author: Carlos Fuentes

Year: 2011

Publisher: Punto de Lectura

Summary

The title of this book, The Good Conscience, means hypocrisy and selfishness. This book is based on the life of Jaime Cevallos, who is at the end of his adolescence. He has to decide what to do with his life. He was undecided which way he had to take, his own religious values or his family’s moral values. Cevallos lived in Guanajuato, Mexico. He was a child of a rich family, which helped him to attend a distinguished school. He was a very simple person in contrast to other children in his school. He preferred, his friend Juan Manuel, who was very poor but he went to the same school as because of receiving a scholarship.. Jaime hated the customs of his family because he thought they are wrong. His family appeared to be Christians, but they were doing the immoral things. His aunt was having sinful desires for his nephew, and his uncle was going to brothels. However, Cevallos was in a battle with his family for trying to steal the love of his mother for selfish and immoral reasons. At the end, he analyzed his own behavior that he was exactly the same as his devious family because he ''appeared to be what he is not''.

Recommendation

I recommend this book because I think it is addressed to the adolescents like Jaime Cevallos, who was an adolescent too. The author, Cevallos relates some of own experiences from which we can learn something meaningful and apply it to our own lives. Also, we can learn about the lifestyle and the customs of that time period. This book is very interesting in how the author relates in the passage his experiences that seems similar to ours own lives nowadays.