Archive for the ‘Isabel Allende’ Tag
A Long Petal of the Sea – the title of Isabel Allende’s new novel, refers to Pablo Neruda’s poem describing Chile. It’s an absorbing story about love, country and belonging.
When introduced, Roser is a young shepherd girl with an impressive ear for music. This provides opportunities far beyond expectations – including an education leading to a music scholarship at university in Barcelona. The Spanish Civil War is well underway.
Roser falls in love with the younger son of her music mentor, but it’s the older son, Victor, with whom she spends most of her life. From Spain, Roser and Victor arrive in France separately as refugees. They reconnect and, with the onset of World War II, realize they need to leave Europe and seek passage to Chile. Naruda led the charge getting Spanish refugees to his country. However, Roser and Victor must marry in order to travel together. What begins as a marriage of convenience slowly evolves into something much deeper.
As they settle into their new lives in Santiago, Roser pursues her music career and establishes a name for herself in South America. Victor continues his medical studies and becomes a doctor. He also has a brief liaison with the daughter of an upper class family.
Each chapter begins with a verse from a Naruda poem. The narrative moves through civil unrest in Chile, moments of professional success, parenting, another exile and love. Allende makes it clear, belonging is not just fitting into a place, but being with the right person.
A Long Petal of the Sea
Four Bookmarks
Ballantine Books, 2020
314 pages
Isabel Allende is among my favorite authors. I am reminded of how I feel about my kids: I love them even though they sometimes do things I don’t always like. Allende’s most recent novel, The Japanese Lover, is like that.
The story involves too many secrets, predictable plot lines and cardboard characters. Alma Belasco, a woman of means in her 80s, moves into Lark House, an unconventional nursing home. There she meets 23-year-old care-giver, Irina Bazili. The two bond, and soon Irina is helping Alma’s grandson, Seth, work on a book about Alma and the Belasco family history.
Of course, Irina has a past about which little is revealed, but Alma has secrets, too. As Seth and Irina learn more about Alma, it’s apparent there’s a lost love. Yawn. The younger couple believes the romance is still going strong, although this is all based on speculation.
There was, in fact, a lover. He started out as the youngest son of the Belasco family’s Japanese gardener and Alma’s childhood best friend. One of the most interesting aspects of the narrative is when Ichimei and his family are uprooted from their San Francisco home and relocated, with thousands of other Japanese-Americans, to an internment camp.
Given his role as title character, Ichimei is one-dimensional. Even Alma could have been so much more – especially in Allende’s hands. Alas, this is one of those books I didn’t like much; nonetheless, I look forward to the author’s next work.
The Japanese Lover
Two-and-a-half Bookmarks
Atria Books, 2015
322 pages
Isabel Allende is a master storyteller. Her characters have depth; their lives are full of mystery, love and befuddlement. Her most recent novel, Maya’s Notebook, is no exception. Well, it is, because it’s exceptional – even for Allende.
Maya is a 19-year-old girl on the lam on a remote island off the coast of Chile, her grandmother’s homeland. Maya was raised in Berkeley by her grandparents, a couple remarkable in their differences and their passion for life. Maya’s father floats in and out in a minor role; her mother doesn’t even rate that distinction. Several stories are told through Maya’s journal. She recounts her magical childhood, her arrival in Chiloe’ and counters these almost idyllic recollections with the explanation of why she is in hiding. The book’s first sentence, while seemingly melodramatic, creates suspense: “… if I valued my life at all, I should not get in touch with anyone I knew until we could be sure my enemies were no longer looking for me.”
Maya writes of her past and present in chronological order until the two eventually intersect. She begins with how her grandparents met and moves into how, as an infant, she came to live with them. Allende builds tension through Maya’s descriptions of her avalanche of mistakes made as an adolescent. Grief and environment contributed to one bad decision after another. Yet, a sense of calm surfaces as Maya relates her life in Chiloe’ while learning to appreciate the world around her and her place in it.
Maya’s Notebook
Five Bookmarks
Harper Collins, 2013
387 pages
The Blue Page Special 