Of Love and Shadows: A Novel
by Isabel Allende
List Price:
Our Price: $7.24
You Save: $7.76 (52%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.95 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Isabel AllendeEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-08-30
ISBN: 0553383833
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Book Reviews of Of Love and Shadows: A Novel
Book Review: A chilling tale with moral warmth
Summary: 5 Stars
This fine novel can be read on many levels. It contains a love story and a story of adventure. I think of it as a story of disillusion, of coming to recognize unpleasant truths.
It is set in an unnamed South American country whose elected government was recently overthrown by a right-wing coup. The story's background would be consistent with several dictatorships, but is most reminiscent of Chile after the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende was overthrown by General Pinochet in 1973. (Isabel Allende is a Chilean and a distant relative of Salvador Allende.)
The main character is a young woman, Irene, of the country's middle class. She is apolitical until she offers to help an acquaintance find out what happened to a daughter who was taken for questioning by the military. The military claimed to have released the daughter, but she was never seen again.
Irene works for a magazine and is accompanied in some of her inquiries
by a photographer, Francisco, with whom she gradually falls in love. Their search for the missing girl leads them to the discovery of her body in an abandoned mine, along with other bodies. This puts Irene and Francisco in danger, forcing them to flee the country through the Andean cordillera.
The book is very well written, and the English translation is fluent.
The sadness of living in a society in which there is a facade of decency, freedom, and justice without the substance is conveyed indirectly, but poignantly. Irene has a good life in the material sense, but can this be enjoyed when people whom the government considers suspicious sometimes "disappear"?
A natural human tendency in such situations is to look the other way, to deny the facts, or rationalize them by assuming that the "disappeared" must be some kind of undesirables (e.g., "communists" in an earlier day, or "terrorists" today). Irene does not take this route.
I think that almost anyone who accepts the possibility of the milieu in which the book is set would be moved by this book. But some, through
inexperience, may wonder if the milieu is overdrawn. If one can't accept the book's setting, then its story becomes a kind of escapist fairy tale, like a detective story.
I have lived in several South American dictatorships and happened to be in Santiago for a month preceding and (involuntarily) a month after the 1973 coup. In my experience, the milieu described in "Of Love and Shadows" is not overdrawn. If anything, it is underdrawn.
There are a few places in the book where I had to suspend disbelief (e.g., a poltergeist incident which plays a significant role in the plot's development), but the "feel" of the society in which the characters move is consistent with my experiences in such places.
Readers who have difficulty imagining a society in which people can simply "disappear", perhaps never to be seen again, or perhaps to show up mutilated in some morgue, might ponder the U.S. after the destruction of the World Trade Center. Innocent travelers have been known to "disappear" into secret prisons, never charged with any definite crime and released (perhaps) years later after mistreatment and without explanation or apology.
Most people, like Irene before her awakening, are not affected. Unlike Irene, many do not care, so long as they are not likely to be affected.
There is a great difference of degree between the post-9/11 milieu in the U.S. and that in which the book is set, but is there a real difference in kind? This book may cause some readers to ponder how they would act in Irene's circumstances.
[Note: Many of Ms. Allende's books, such as "Eva Luna" and "The House of the Spirits", are written in the so-called "magical realism" style. "Of Love and Shadows" is not (though it does appear briefly in the poltergeist incident mentioned above). Readers who don't care for that style might still find value in "Of Love and Shadows". On the whole, it is completely different.
I couldn't get through "The House of the Spirits". I did get through "Eva Luna" but its cartoonish style left a bad aftertaste. After finishing it, I wondered why I had wasted my time.]
Political Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Political Books
Spinning Dixieby Eric Dezenhall
Thomas Dunne Books; Published: 2006-12-26; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.69
Price in other shops:
Doing Dangerously Wellby Carole Enahoro
Vintage Canada; Published: 2011-05-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.47
Price in other shops:
The Autobiography Of Joseph Stalin: A Novelby Richard Lourie
Da Capo Press; Published: 2000-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.75
Price in other shops:
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovichby Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
Henry Holt & Co (P); Published: 1978-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.98
The Blue Woundby Garet Garrett
General Books LLC; Published: 2012-01-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.14
Phineas Finn (Oxford World's Classics)by Anthony Trollope, Simon Dentith
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2011-12-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.22
Price in other shops:
The Woman Who Did (Oxford Popular Fiction)by Grant Allen
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1995-06-29; Paperback; Book
Price in other shops:
Blood Kin: A Novelby Ceridwen Dovey
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2009-02-24; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
The Army of the Republic: A Novelby Stuart Archer Cohen
St. Martin's Press; Published: 2008-09-02; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $0.78
Price in other shops:
Citizen Vince: A Novelby Jess Walter
Harper; Published: 2005-04-12; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.58
Price in other shops:
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
The Stories of Eva Lunaby Isabel Allende
Scribner; Published: 2001-11-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.98
Price in other shops:
Born in Blood & Fire: A Concise History of Latin America (Third Edition)by John Charles Chasteen
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2011-02-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $40.34
Zorro: A Novel (P.S.)by Isabel Allende
Harper Perennial; Published: 2006-04-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops:
Paula: A Memoir (P.S.)by Isabel Allende
Harper Perennial; Published: 2008-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.91
Price in other shops:
Documenting Latin America, Volume 2by Erin O'Connor, Leo Garofalo
Prentice Hall; Published: 2010-10-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $43.49
Price in other shops:
Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Sensesby Isabel Allende
Harper Perennial; Published: 1999-04-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.85
Price in other shops:
Island Beneath the Sea: A Novel (P.S.)by Isabel Allende
Harper Perennial; Published: 2011-04-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.25
Price in other shops:
Ines of My Soul: A Novelby Isabel Allende
Harper Perennial; Published: 2007-08-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.50
Price in other shops:
The House of the Spirits: A Novelby Isabel Allende
Dial Press Trade Paperback; Published: 2005-08-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.88
Price in other shops:
Eva Luna: A Novelby Isabel Allende
Dial Press Trade Paperback; Published: 2005-08-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.99
Price in other shops: