The Chancellor has been at me for years to read Isabel Allende, and finally, I caved in. He chose Zorro for February’s book club, and I thought I would start by first reading The House of the Spirits. It’s drawn a lot of comparisons to Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, which on the surface seems fair, but honestly, I think Allende’s is the superior novel. Full review can be found at my blog, The Universe Disturbed.
Interesting Characters, Incredible Writing
Isabel Allende’s Portrait in Sepia, which I read earlier this year, is the sequel to Daughter of Fortune. I read them in the wrong order, but it doesn’t matter too much in this case. In Portrait in Sepia, we find out what happens to Eliza’s granddaughter, Aurora del Valle — a young lady being raised in San Francisco. In Daughter of Fortune, we learn how Eliza Sommers made it there in the first place. “She has a fixation on love. Strong trouble. The girl left her window open one […]
Everything I know about Chilean history, I know from Isabel Allende
And what I’ve learned about Chilean history from Isabel Allende tends to be very sad indeed. Portrait in Sepia, like any of Allende’s books, is beautiful and sad and wonderful. I loved it and couldn’t put it down. “Each of us chooses the tone for telling his or her own story. I would like to choose the durable clarity of a platinum print, but nothing in my destiny possesses the luminosity. I live among diffuse shadings, veiled mysteries, uncertainties; the tone of telling my life is […]
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
The House of the Spirits was Isabel Allende’s first novel, but it contains a lot of the elements that made me love her other books: strong women, political turmoil and wonderful, subtle magic. “At times I feel as if I had lived all this before and that I have already written these very words, but I know it was not I: it was another woman, who kept her notebooks so that one day I could use them.” The story of three generations of women: Clara […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 3
- 4
- 5