Isabel Allende, Trans. by Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson
RaveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksAllende sees that to embellish the violence of war is to create distance from it, which can be useful in the immediate aftermath of irreparable trauma but would feel oddly escapist after nearly eight decades of reflection ... In that vein, Allende allows her writing to breathe. It’s light and fast ... her work moves with the economy of a fairy tale, as she collapses the long lives of her characters into a quick 13 chapters. Her language is direct and compressed. There is no ornament to her description of Spain and Chile, but rather than feeling brutalist or cold it comes across as melancholic ... The question that interests Allende is to what extent love awakens the feelings that make us human even as war and exile work to destroy them. She alerts us to suffering only to investigate the alienation — or personal exile — that drips from the tap of a savage world ... Forever exiles to Chileans, Venezuelans, and Spaniards, Victor and Roser recover their agency by lovingly renewing their partnership. They suspend the suffering and crystallize their humanity. They open their hearts to the world ... In this way, Allende shows us that even the briefest moments of intimacy can venerate the soul’s beauty.
