I read Violeta by Isabel Allende as a break from the multiple thrillers I read a couple of months ago (RIP Reading challenge). I wasn’t particularly in the mood for this book when I read it, which may be why I am slightly ambivalent about it. It’s not a bad book, but I think I was expecting something a bit more from it.
About Violeta
Violeta enters the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family of five boisterous sons. From the start, her life will be marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth.
Through her father’s prescience, the family will endure that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses everything and retreats to a wild, beautiful, remote part of the country. She will come of age there, and her first suitor will come calling.
She tells her story in a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, times of poverty and wealth, terrible loss, and immense joy. Her life will be shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women’s rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and, ultimately, not one but two pandemics.
~ Synopsis from GoodReads
My Review
If I had to describe this book in a sentence, it would be Forrest Gump, only with a glamorous, intelligent woman in South America as a protagonist.
So, if you love those kinds of stories – historical events narrated through the eyes of one person, you would like this one.
I liked it, but there were so many events – the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, drug running, communism, dictatorships, Cuba, and so much more. It was a little tiring, and the narrator, Violeta, is written a little oddly. She is in the thick of things, but somehow, the way the story is told, it feels like she is narrating something quite impersonal.
People come and go, people are born and die, and almost all those events are treated equally. Violeta has a stoic approach to life, which is admirable but doesn’t make for engaging reading.
What I did like about Violeta was how strong she was. She owns her life and her mistakes, and throughout, is independent and thoughtful and the pillar of the family, especially during the later part of her life.
But overall, this was a good read, but somewhat predictable, and doesn’t live up to the high standards of other Allende books.
