IN PRAISE OF THE STEPMOTHER <i> by Mario Vargas Llosa, translated by Helen Lane (Penguin: $10.95, illustrated).</i>

This curious novel by the noted Peruvian writer is composed of a series of erotic vignettes inspired by various paintings, including Titian’s “Venus With Cupid and Music,” Boucher’s “Diana at the Bath” and Jordaens’ “Candaules, King of Lydia, Showing His Wife to Prime Minister Gyges.” Llosa interweaves these fantasies with a weird tale of a semi-incestuous passion involving the wealthy Don Rigoberto, his adolescent son, Alfonso, and his lovely second wife, Lucrecia. The author describes the real and imagined events in sensual, almost obsessively detailed prose: He devotes several paragraphs to Rigoberto’s ritual cleansing of his ears. The resulting story is undoubtedly original, but not for the squeamish.