The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The House of the Spirits
Book Review: A book you will read over and over again...
Summary: 5 Stars
This was the first Isabel Allende book I ever read. I first read it as a young girl, and since that time I have read it over again countless times. What amazes me most is that it still has the ability to transport me to another place another time. The language is beautiful and often poetic, and the charecters are real. I grew up surrounded by hispanic culture and Allende captures the spirituality, the superstitions and the sexual and age dynamics of that culture truthfully. Allende introduced me to the horrors of the Pinochet regime with this book, and thereby launched a career in learning as much about it as possible and working to bring justice to those his regime affected. This is one of those books that has the power to change you, to get under your skin, to open your eyes to another world and culture, and to the realities of the modern age. Book Review: hip hip horray for house of the spirits
Summary: 5 Stars
wonderfully written fantastical but believable on every level. Truly identifies and pulls at every human emotion and tells a fabulous story. Fast paced and full of twists and turns this plot is one of a kind. Highly recommendedBook Review: Allende's Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
I first read this eighteen years ago, and it never left me. Rereading this book feels, to be very corny, like reuniting with an old lover.
Simply, it's the story of Esteban Trueba, an impoverished gentleman who works his way up to a vast fortune and political power in an unanmned Latin American country (it's actually Chile.), and his stormy relations with the women in his life. His mystical, serene wife Clara, who talks to spirits, his rebellious daughter Blanca, who falls in love with the son of a peasant, and grandaughter Alba, who combines traits of both her mother and grandmother.
Most readers comment on the women of this story, but I think the real focus is Don Esteban, a man whose short-sided arrogance leads him to make many mistakes, with consequences that don't come back to bite him so much as they come back to devour him, his family,and his entire world. In the end he's old, ill, and destroyed, trying to make peace with his grand-daughter. Latin American history is full of men like this. It's the women who endure.
None of Allende's subsequent books comes close to this. A lovely, haunting tale I'll probably read again. I probably won't wait eighteen years.
Book Review: se los recomiendo!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Es un libro facinate. Desde que Comienzas a leer no puedes despegarte de el, sientes que los personaje cobran vida, sientes que eres parte de la historia. buenisimoooo. Book Review: WAY Too Much Like 100 Years Of Solitude. UNORIGINAL!
Summary: 2 Stars
"House Of The Spirits" is an inferior reflection of "100 Years Of Solitude" but still somehow the SAME BOOK!!!!
Told in a weird narrative that flip flops from first-person to third - (and sloppily too) - House of the Spirits is about 4 generations of a very turbulent family in South America. The main character is Esteban Trueba who is as fierce with his temper as he is with his genitals. He RUNS the town of Tres Marias with an iron fist, having built it up from nothing into a strong, industrial corner of the country. He's a jerk and almost nobody likes him but he forces himself on people because he hates being alone. Nobody has a choice either - he's the boss and what he says goes.
His wife is Clara, a woman with magical powers and an aloof but ignorant demeanor. Her very existence is way too akin to the wild machinations that drove many a plot in Solitude. Everything she does is as far-fetched and stretched as she reads minds and performs acts of telekinesis. Her late sister was Rosa The Beautiful, who like Solitude's Remedios The Beauty, is so ridiculously captivating that she dies young because no one so gorgeous should have to deal with the rigors of time hurting their peerless looks. Clara has twins who, like the twins in Solitude, are absolutely nothing alike and take different paths in life. Ferula is her sister-in-law, a virgin spinster like Amaranta in Solitude. Her son-in-law is Jean Satigny, a foreign girly snob who has softer hands than any woman - you know, like Pietro Crespi in Solitude. WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON HERE?!?!?!
Solitude was written in '69, House in 82. Solitude won the Nobel Prize, House was a bestseller. Solitude has the word "solitude" on almost every 400+ page, House has it a lot. House wants to be Solitude so bad! But it has one simple problem: It's NOT as good as Solitude.
I want to ask Isabelle Allende something. Do you have any books that YOU'VE written? I like your style so perhaps I'll check your stuff out again, I just wanna make sure that you've written something that wasn't written already. I don't need any...The Picasso Riddle....The Baron of Monte Carlo...you know, more rip-offs. I need a real, original book from you and if you can do that, I'll take a look. Just don't b.s. me anymore.
The weird part is, I really liked the book because, heck...I LOVED 100 Years Of Solitude!!! So I guess I like chocolate cupcakes because I like chocolate cake. One is the lesser form of the other. So, I'm not recommending this book. I want to expand my mind and learn new things, not go 400 pages repeating someone else's work. Now, I'll see the movie, starring Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close and Winona Ryder. Oh, and Antonio Banderas, somehow the only freakin' Hispanic actor in the whole darned thing.
Read Solitude instead.