About this title: Isabel Allende's compelling magical-realist saga about the Trueba family in Chile is a political and social history of the country, as well as a powerful novel of family relationships. The novel revolves around the lives of the larger-than-life patriarch Esteban, his elusive wife Clara, their rebellious daughter Blanca, and Blanca's out-of-wedlock child Alba, who leads the family into the future.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Bantam, Westminster, Maryland, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1986
ISBN-13:9780553258653ISBN:0553258656
Description: Good. 0553258656 Mass market paperback, previously read used book in good condition, varying degrees of shelf wear, some spine creases, m..._ read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Bantam, Westminster, Maryland, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1986
ISBN-13:9780553258653ISBN:0553258656
Description: Good. 0553258656 Mass market paperback, previously read used book in good condition, varying degrees of shelf wear, some spine creases, m...02506710 _ read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Bantam Books
Date Published: 1986
ISBN-13:9780553273915ISBN:0553273914
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. Near new. Light crease front cover, bottom corner. Text in English, Spanish. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 448 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
"Allende's The House of Spirits deserves as much recognition, perhaps more, than Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Both novels narrate the story of a Latin American country suffering the tyranny of dictatorship, but Allende's is an epic about one Chilean family that spans sixty years and is told without the bitter pessimism that permeates Diaz's work, even though some very dark events are portrayed. The Trueba family has at its head a patrician patriarch named Esteban who has an awful temper. In the beginning, Esteban cares for the peasants on the grounds of his hacienda, treating their hunger, parasites, and need for education, but he can't see beyond the traditional exploitation of the peasants. They are children, he is virtually their father. Yet neither his wife nor his children share his sense of superiority and entitlement. As Esteban and his wife age and his children grow up, the life of the Trueba family becomes a microcosm for the larger social and political turmoil that tears Chile apart. Allende handles the various viewpoints with empathy and skill, subtlety and complexity. The novel ends on a hopeful note when Esteban's granddaughter Alba moves beyond the narrow view created by her own experiences to draw larger lessons for her family and her country and her outlook is cautiously positive."
"I rated here the book as four stars but the real rate is 3.5 stars. Isabel Allende tells the story ( and really she is a storyteller) about the lives and loves and troubles of a family in a country in South America. Although the story is beautifully written (although the images sometimes are a little bit forced, but maybe that is just my dutch translation), I didn't feel it was a superb book. Here's why. The caracters are two-dimensional. Reading the book I could guess where the story was going and the main reason is that the caracters are to logical. In given her caracters limited space to move beyond the expected Isabel Allende isn't doing her story a favour and that's a real pity because otherwise I really enjoyed escaping in the book for a couple of hours. A good book that could have been great. The magic aspect is seen throughout the book, especially in the character of Clara the clairvoyant. Magic is treated as commonplace and very real. Only in magic realism can a mother bathe her daughter or give food to the poor just as easily as predict the future and move things with her mind. Only in magic realism can a Senator vehemently oppose Marxism within the walls of Congress as well as shrink daily due to a curse."
"really beautiful magic realism about facism, socialism and relatioinships between generations of women... absorbing and uses form to talk about women and other kinds of knowledge.... and politics"
"Allende's first and best work of art. The story of three generations of Trueba women that tells the history of a nation.
During the first 10 pages I was thinking to myself that there is way too much similarity on so many levels to One Hundred Years of Solitude, but why not, since it's the bible of Latin American magical realism?
In addition to Clara, the second Del Valle daughter who forsaw the future, communicated with spirits, and moved objects without touching them, and Blanca, her daughter who was castaway because of her forbidden love story with a communist peasant, and Alba, Blanca's daughter who had the green hair of her great aunt Rosa, the story of the book also revolves around Senator Esteban Trueba, the hardline right-wing, anti-communist, angry yet heartbroken oligarch; the Latin Patriarch of the Trueba family, and the man who built the big house on the corner. Allende almost seems rather sympathetic to the man who supressed his workers, raped all the peasant girls he could get his hands on, denied his illigitimate children, knocked the teeth out of his wife's mouth, beat his daughter and alienated her, almost killing her lover and forcing her to marry a French count with strange sexual fetishes, and contibuted greatly to the fall of a democratic government. What's the reason for this sympathetic attitude? maybe because it's Isabelle's own grandfather? Probably.
What I loved most about The House of the Spirits is that it bore witness to the most important part of Chilean history: the Pinochet era. The narration of events that lead to the rising popularity of leftist parties that lead to the election of "the President" who is Salvador Allende- related to the author- the role the oligarchy played in giving the military a new-found power which resulted in the assasination of Allende, the fall of democracy in a country that was unfamiliar to coups and non-democratic processes, and the instillation of a tyrannical right-wing dictatorship that killed off its political enemies, tortured political prisoners, assasinated whoever was suspect of Marxism, and ruined the history of a nation, headed by Pinochet.
The best way to follow this book is by reading her memoires: My Invented Country, and getting a Pablo Neruda - referred to as The Poet in the book- poetry collection."
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