“Perhaps we had the good fortune to stumble into an exceptional love, a love I did not have to invent, only clothe in all it’s glory so it could endure in memory—in keeping with the principle that we can construct reality in the image of our desires.”

I am so torn with my rating. The beginning of the novel deserves 5 stars. But once Eva Luna moved on from Riad Halabí (about halfway in the novel) the story became rushed and not as descriptive. I was unsatisfied with the ending because there could have been more character development on Rolf Carlé. Rolf Carlé’s story was shared alongside Eva Luna’s account of her own life. I feel like since Rolf Carlé was such a prominent character he deserved more. What exactly? I don’t know but I definitely needed more.

Nevertheless, Eva Luna is a great story filled with characters I will always remember, passion and eroticism, and of course in true Allende fashion, historical and feminist connections.

En Eva Luna, la autora retrata la convulsa y relativamente reciente Latinoamérica política, cultural, económica y social. Son todos sus países y a la vez no es ninguno. Por lo mismo, me llamó mucho la atención que la ficha de este libro en GR indicara que está ambientado en Chile. Con conocimiento de causa puedo afirmar que no es así y borré inmediatamente ese dato. Sí, por supuesto hay varias referencias a sucesos y situaciones de la historia chilena, pero de igual manera a la de muchos otros países de América, generando una amalgama que no deja duda que la autora es una de las máximas exponentes del realismo mágico.

Esta novela es la primera que leo de Isabel Allende y me dejó absolutamente fascinada su calidad narrativa; te envuelve y te seduce con las historias de un sinnúmero de personajes que rodean la vida de Eva y Rolf, los personajes principales. En capítulos alternados entre ellos, conoceremos sus experiencias de vida desde su más tierna infancia y cómo forjaron su destino entre tragedias y desarraigo, pero con un espíritu de superación que hace inminente su encuentro hacia los últimos capítulos.

Lamento haber tardado tanto en descubrir a Isabel Allende y con seguridad voy a seguir incursionando en sus otras obras.

n  Reto #28 PopSugar 2021: Un libro de realismo mágicon

Was assigned this for the Feminist Ethics course where I composed the paper on thisKafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Enjoyed Eva Luna immensely on the political level, but, then, there's the melodrama. This is a telenovela, a Fassbinder for those in the cult of the (Latin American) Boom. There is a fascinating positioning of common tropes to allegedly higher ends.

Despite is exaggeration, the model Allende employs lends itself well to theory, for those inclined.

This is my first novel by Isabel Allende, and I am probably not shocking anyone by saying that she puts the "magic" in magical realism. And with the story of "Eva Luna", she weaved a brightly colored, shimmering yarn about the magic of story-telling, which may very well be the last remaining bit of magic well and truly alive in the world.

The first strand of this story is the life of Consuelo, Eva's mother, her strange upbringing and life until the birth of her only daughter. Eva's strand of the story stems from it, but closely entangled to it is the story of Rolf Carlé, a young boy born half a world away but who is destined to cross paths with Eva one day. The smaller, but equally bright strands of story reserved to Mimi, Huberto and Riad turn this novel into a fantastic tapestry, which pays homage to Sheherazade and other women who have had to enchant people with stories to make a living.

Of course there is a plot, but that plot didn't seem to me like it was the most important part of "Eva Luna". What truly matters here is that language can dance on the page until you are feasting your eyes and your imagination on it's pirouettes.

Lovely, dreamy, a little evasive but absolutely spell-binding.

Me encantó vivir cada etapa de la vida de Eva a través del velo de la realidad-fantástica; cómo a pesar de la tragedia, pobreza, guerrillas y abusos, existe algo positivo latente. Eva iletrada, llena de simpleza, impresionable, valiente en muchos sentidos... Disfruté mucho la lectura y me es difícil elegir una frase, pero una de las que más me enterneció fue una de cuando Eva tenía 9 años:
"Había llegado el instante de despedirnos y él, con las mejillas rojas, extendió la mano para estrechar la mía. Le eché las manos al cuello, pero él me dio un empujón y casi me tira de espaldas. Lo sujeté con todas mis fuerzas por la camisa y le planté un beso que iba destinado a la boca, pero le cayó en la nariz. Él echó a trotar cerro abajo, sin mirar atrás, mientras yo me sentaba en la puerta a cantar."

Eva Luna chronicles the life of Eva and her relationships. It is set in South America. As with other books by this author, she creates authentic characters and weaving rich historical background into their stories.

However, I struggled to connect with Eva. She was orphaned at young age, and had little assistance going forward. She had to forge her own way, which wasn’t easy. With time, she discovers that she is a gifted storyteller.

The story is character-driven, which I love. However, the complicated life of Eva with not much of a plot driving the story and detailed descriptions made it a slow-paced read.

For me personally, the style of writing of this author is either I connect constantly or I don’t due to the overwhelming descriptions. And the latter is the case here.

Set in an unnamed, South American country Eva Luna is a poetic, modern day Latina flavored version of 1001 Arabian nights. Within the novel, whilst the protagonist and other main characters are living their lives, they all encounter fantastical, unique and morally ambigous characters. What is most impressive about the novel though, is how all of those smaller, strange stories are wound together neatly at climax of the novel in a believable fashion.

The romantic triangle in the novel, though not empahsized, is what nags at the reader's mind and keeps them dedicated throughout all of the smaller sub plots. Eva Luna's many romantic and sexual relationships are all written in a vivdly passionate manner keeping the reader divided on whom is the proper ending for Eva. To contrast the "softer" romantic storyline is the "harder" storyline of constant political change in this fictional South American nation. Even apathetic, every day citizens find it hard to ignore the rioits, rebellions and guerrllia forces making their mark around them. The soft and hard storylines contrast with each other wonderfully and later on play off each other.

The detail used in the writing, though ocassionally tedious to work through, most of the time illustrates beautiful, almost romantic, visions. While our modern day Scheherazade, Eva, spins tales about those wacky secondary characters she uses precise detail to suck the reader into the story within the story. But I must reiterate, that the wonder of these sub stories is how Allende later makes them relevant to the main plot.

Politically and passionatly charged Eva Luna is a fantastic novel about what it is like to be female growing up with enouigh flavor of it's to make it a unique tale.

Isabel Allende is one of my favorite authors and I’m having fun re-reading some of her books. It took me a little longer to complete this one. I mean that in a good way. Her writing is so beautiful and so rich, that I often found myself re-reading paragraphs. I love the depth and richness of all the characters.

A quote that I loved:
“The house was a vast labyrinth of books. Volumes were stacked from floor to ceiling on every wall, dark, crackling, redolent of leather bindings, smooth to the touch, with their gold titles and translucent gilt-edged pages and delicate typography.”

Ho adorato la prima parte, ma ho fatto fatica a leggere la seconda. Peccato, perché era cominciato veramente bene. Il libro, inoltre, è come mozzato, e penso che si debba leggere anche Eva Luna racconta per vivere appieno la storia.

مذهلة

A story about a storyteller stumbled from one bizarre event to others while also telling stories of these eccentric personalities she met, came and went through her life, whom she loved or had loved her and shaped her life. Eva Luna herself, started as a rebellious orphan, full of wonder with fantastic imagination and streak of dramatic insanity that could surprise you when its infrequent but impressive occurrence. Weirdly enough, despite being supposedly such a talented inventor of fantastical stories, writing a telenovela about the story of her life was the big destiny of her existence. That and devoting her entire being waiting for her soulmate, revolving around men and falling in love with them or more like in love with her idealistic fantasy of romantic love and being disillusioned afterward. She ended up as a dull, damsel in distress who was flat, boring, loved by everyone, faultless and flawless. This very disappointing resolution mirrored the book story line, which was very interesting in the beginning with its alluring prose, sometimes beautiful moments, and odd but fascinating happenings, progressed to boring half-cooked political plot about guerrilla war and melodramatic telenovela itself. I lost interest halfway down the book and around last quarter of the book, I just wanted it to be over. It was not that bad, if one was into telenovela stuff, in this case, with stroke of perverse taste and sexual relationship in certain flavours, it just put me off from the already banal tale. The writing style was the saving grace for me, and some of the sideline characters were delightful.

*Note: Contains some soft spoilers* (I usually try to avoid any spoilers, but this is how the review came out!)

“I came into the world with a breath of the jungle in my memory.”

Eva Luna is a rich and vibrant novel about love, power, and the development of a storyteller. It begins with Eva’s mother Consuelo in an unnamed South American country, her magical life among missionaries and later servant to a professor who had developed a miracle embalming fluid. Eva’s father-to-be is a gardener for the professor who is bitten by a poisonous snake, and Eva is conceived right before his death. She grows up in this strange household scrubbing floors alongside her mother and when her mother dies, though Eva is still quite young, she tends the ailing professor and the one possession she takes with her when he dies is an embalmed Puma.

So, you know, it’s interesting!

The story takes us through Eva’s life, with amazing experiences like being taken in by a young rebel who teaches her how to live on the street and who then settles her into a brothel under the loving care of La Señora.

Meanwhile, a parallel story is told of the young Rolf Carlé, who flees his dangerous household in Europe after experiencing abuse and war trauma. He lands in South America to live with his Aunt and Uncle in La Colonia, a utopian village created to take the best ideas from the settlers’ European homelands.

Eva and Rolf grow up separately to have many experiences with love and danger on their way to taking part in the revolution and also finding their true callings: Eva as a writer and Rolf as a photojournalist. The many supporting characters each have their own developmental storylines, including Eva’s Abuela who sleeps in a coffin and Mimi, the beautiful woman born in a man’s body.

Eva has many transformations of her own, but appropriate to the writer she is, primarily she observes and absorbs her experiences and only toward the end is she able to settle into hard-won happiness transforming them into manuscripts.

“Little by little the past was transformed into the present, the future was also mine; the dead came alive with an illusion of eternity; those who had been separated were reunited, and all that had been lost in oblivion regained precise dimensions.”

While I enjoyed all the color and drama I’ve come to expect from Allende, this one didn’t hold together as well for me as her other novels I’ve read, I think because there is just SO much packed in here. On the other hand, the writing aspect gave it a special meaning to me, and I’m happy to say all of these memorable characters will be hanging around in my mind for a long time.

Maybe not a good Allende to start with, but for fans, a real treat.