Take a photo of a barcode or cover
abbie_ 's review for:
The House of the Spirits
by Isabel Allende
Isabel Allende made it onto my auto-buy-author list with this masterpiece, and I will now be hunting down and devouring everything with her name on it!
.
The House of the Spirits (translated from the Spanish by Magda Bogin) is a sprawling saga that spans four generations of the del Valle/Trueba families with a healthy dose of magical realism. There are comparisons to Gabriel García Márquez's 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' and I can see why, except everything I loved about that book was multiplied by ten thousand in THIS book, so you can only imagine how much I loved it! The magical realism elements are heightened, women are mostly the main focus, THE PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERENT NAMES SO YOU DON'T GET CONFUSED AS FUCK, MÁRQUEZ.
.
Although the country is unnamed in the novel, it's essentially set in Chile from the first World War until the coup d'état in 1973. I absolutely love it when books encourage me to do some research of my own and learn about countries and parts of history that I was ignorant about before. The first 400 pages have a decidedly different tone than the last 100, which become a lot darker, as politics become volatile and the brutal dictatorship is enforced, and yet the story as a whole still clicks.
.
I could not decide on a favourite character if you paid me! Clara the clairvoyant, Alba, Férula, all were women whom I came to admire and love; these types of books are really incredible because you encounter so much as the character lives out their whole life that you feel like you really know them! It's a wonderful feeling to be so fully immersed in a novel.
.
Addressing issues such as classicism, extremism, feminism, motherhood, rape, poverty, brutality, among a plethora of others, there's no shortage of heavy subjects that are all handled expertly by Allende and mixed beautifully with the magical realism to create a novel that I don't think any reader will forget! A new favourite!
.
The House of the Spirits (translated from the Spanish by Magda Bogin) is a sprawling saga that spans four generations of the del Valle/Trueba families with a healthy dose of magical realism. There are comparisons to Gabriel García Márquez's 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' and I can see why, except everything I loved about that book was multiplied by ten thousand in THIS book, so you can only imagine how much I loved it! The magical realism elements are heightened, women are mostly the main focus, THE PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERENT NAMES SO YOU DON'T GET CONFUSED AS FUCK, MÁRQUEZ.
.
Although the country is unnamed in the novel, it's essentially set in Chile from the first World War until the coup d'état in 1973. I absolutely love it when books encourage me to do some research of my own and learn about countries and parts of history that I was ignorant about before. The first 400 pages have a decidedly different tone than the last 100, which become a lot darker, as politics become volatile and the brutal dictatorship is enforced, and yet the story as a whole still clicks.
.
I could not decide on a favourite character if you paid me! Clara the clairvoyant, Alba, Férula, all were women whom I came to admire and love; these types of books are really incredible because you encounter so much as the character lives out their whole life that you feel like you really know them! It's a wonderful feeling to be so fully immersed in a novel.
.
Addressing issues such as classicism, extremism, feminism, motherhood, rape, poverty, brutality, among a plethora of others, there's no shortage of heavy subjects that are all handled expertly by Allende and mixed beautifully with the magical realism to create a novel that I don't think any reader will forget! A new favourite!