This is a shallow and boring book… Allende suffers from some serious flaws as a writer. There’s a story of some sorts, but it is so boring and depressing, and it carries on for so long and in such a dry and tedious manner, it’s insufferable. There are absolutely no build-ups or excitement. When something finally happens, it comes out of the blue with no sense whatsoever (no explicit or tacit explanations are offered), and when we do actually get some sort of justification, it’s some shallow over-simplification of psychological, emotional, social or historical problems. People were unhappy because the rich abused their power, so a revolution begun. What? Seriously? Allende tries to tackle three generations and the socio-political problems of Chile at the time, building some sort of epic novel, but it simply falls flat on its ass. Not enough depth, not enough direction. Top it all off with some of the driest, least imaginative prose ever and zero critical thinking (offered by the author or required from the reader) and you’ve got a total suck fest.

And yet, the aforementioned is not even the worst quality it possesses. Oh no. What really drives me bats, the Problem, the Poison, is Allende’s portrayal of women. Women that according to Allende, are strong and independent. Being strong is not letting people run over you. Being strong is not letting a son-of-a-bitch ruin your life and your family’s again and again. Fuck, even the chicks that could look into the future would resign to their horrible fate instead of fuckin’ doing something about it. And that precisely brings us to the Main Issue: Resignation. There is this stupid notion about Latin-American women being strong because they possess this “Dignified Resignation” before misery and pain. Fuck that. That is not true and that does not make someone strong. Allende being a Latin-American woman should know that, and feel ashamed of reinforcing such a notion. Strong (Latin-American or not) woman seek change through action and thought. Through love and unselfishness. Not through “Dignified Resignation”. Shit, this really got me going…

É TÃO bom regressar aos livros que nos aquecem e nos arrebatam!!!

NOTA - 10/10

#outubrohispanoamericano

Opinião completa no meu cantinho:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5pNb...

Tal vez temía que ese grandioso amor, que había resistido tantas pruebas, no pudiera sobrevivir a la más terrible de todas: la convivencia.

La casa de los espíritus es el libro debut de Isabel Allende, quien es, sin duda alguna, mi escritora favorita. Este fue uno de los primeros libros que leí en mi adolescencia, después de un hiatus lector. Esta obra ocupa un lugar sumamente especial en mi corazón.

Allende narra varias generaciones de la familia Del Valle y, posteriormente la familia Trueba. Todo inicia cuando Esteban Trueba, trabajador de una mina que desde hace dos años aspira hacer fortuna para poder salir de la pobreza y llevar a su novia Rosa al altar, se entera de su repentina muerte y se lamenta los años de ausencia al lado de su amada. Años más tarde, Esteban se convierte en un temido terrateniente, despótico, agresivo y patriarca. Desposa a Clara, hermana de la difunta Rosa y juntos inician un matrimonio muy particular, donde Esteban se disputa el amor de Clara y ella, un ser humano inalcanzable, n  vive en una constante comunicación con seres de otra dimensión y se encuentra por encima de los fastidios terrenales.n

Sus vidas se desplazan entre la Gran casa de la esquina y el fundo Las Tres Marías, donde su hija Blanca se cría junto a Pedro Tercero García, hijo de un campesino y trabajador del lugar. Esto da inicio a un romance prohibido que durará toda la vida, creando un fruto: Alba, quien hereda la rebeldía de su madre y convicciones muy contrarias a la de su abuelo Esteban, por lo que pagará un alto precio por amor.

Es una historia dulce, fuerte y, para algunos personajes, cruel. Es un retrato real de la sociedad, de las costumbres, de las creencias y tradiciones de aquellos tiempos. Lo más hermoso de esta obra es la adaptabilidad con la que les lectores observamos el transcurso de 50 años de una familia no convencional; tres generaciones muy diferentes.

"Nana had the idea that a good fright might make the child speak, and spent nine years inventing all sorts of desperate strategies for frightening Clara, the end result of which was to immunize the girl forever against terror and surprise. Soon Clara was afraid of nothing. She was unmoved by the sudden appearance of the most livid and undernourished monsters in her room, or by the knock of devils and vampires at her bedroom window. Nana dressed up as a headless pirate, as the executioner of the Tower of London, as a werewolf or a horned devil, depending on her inspiration of the moment and on the ideas she got while flipping through the pages of certain horror magazines, which she bought for this purpose and from which, although she was unable to read, she copied the illustrations. She had acquired the habit of gliding silently through the hallways and jumping at the child in the dark, howling through the doorways, and hiding live animals between her sheet, but none of this elicited so much as a peep from the little girl."

It's just so damn hard to surprise a clairvoyant.

This was my second reading of The House of the Spirits and, if anything, I enjoyed the magical elements of the book much more on this visit.
A re-visit.
A re-visit, spending this last week with the Trueba family, who in turn are re-visited by their past, which Allende spins into the narrative with such ease that reading the story of the different generations made me wonder at every turn of the page what happens next, and what happens to this or that character. Throw in the unspecified political and historical context of the story and I was hooked. Again, I think the second read was more engaging for me than the first in this respect, too. I guess, when I read the book for the first time, I was looking for clear-cut references and didn't appreciate the intention of the book as much, but some of the beauty and sadness of the book lies in the possibility that it may have been the story of many families, not just that of the Truebas.

A new favourite ✨

The House of the Spirits has a lot of aspects I normally wouldn't even consider reading about, and I only started reading this book because it is a famous classic that's been recommended to me several times before. I usually don't like historical fiction set in a modern period, and I am very skeptical towards the concept of a 'family saga', which is the major theme here. Nevertheless, rating this anything lower than five stars would be a great injustice to one of the absolute best books ever written.

The book tells the story of two families in Chile in the middle of the twentieth century. The del Valle family, whose patriarch Severo is a politician for the Liberal party, and most importantly the Trueba family. Esteban Trueba marries the daughter of Severo del Valle, and the story of The House of the Spirits is the story of those two and their descendants, playing out over seventy years. This book manages to weave together the threads of the Trueba family and the modern history of Chile, and in a remarkable way captures the very identity and culture of the Chilean nation within the space of four hundred pages.

Esteban Trueba is in my eyes one of the most fascinating (and in many ways the most despicable) characters in fictional literature, ever. He's a self-made man, going from labouring long days in the mines of the north to becoming a wealthy landowner with tremendous economic and political power. The reader can follow Esteban as his political views become increasingly conservative for each passing year, and he starts on a personal crusade against communists, atheists and everyone else he considers to be a threat to the state of things. Esteban gradually turns into a bitter old man who has few friends, who despises the world and is despised by it in return, whose relations with his wife and children become colder and colder, and whose only solace is a rebellious, radical granddaughter who loves him as much as he loves her.

The House of the Spirits is an excellent novel. The writing is flawless, the characters are interesting and realistic, the story is absolutely captivating and the ending is simply beautiful (and the best part of the entire book). It is not until you reach the end and look back on the journey you've been a part of that you realise just how amazing it has been. This is one of those books everyone should read, and one I would recommend to all the book lovers out there!

This took me some time to read as I wanted to savour it for as long as possible and not have it end. This is my first Allende novel which depicts an epic story of a Latin American family that spans 3 generations. Weaved throughout are hints of mysticism, history, political unrest, cultural richness along with vivid descriptions of a cast of characters in which some evoke ethereal auras and others violent furies.

Allende’s masterful style of writing is lavish with foreshadowing and thematic contrasts and brings as much satisfaction as a warm toasty fire on a cold winter day. 5 ★

"Barrabas appeared in the house, having sailed by sea," the little girl wrote in her diary. Opening with this phrase the history of the family, interwoven and intertwined with the history of the country. Four generations of the Trueba family. The entire, with few exceptions, Chilean twentieth century. This phrase opened the world to the work of Isabel Allende, "The House of Spirits", with which it begins, became the first novel of the writer, which brought her a resounding success.
Isabel Allende is the niece of President Salvador Allende, who was overthrown and killed in the coup led by Augusto Pinochet. More blue blood, white bone (in the realities of a single Latin American country) and it's hard to imagine. Industrialists and politicians in the family, studying in prestigious educational institutions, the habit of rotating in prestigious circles acquired from youth. And childhood spent in the countryside, playing with dirty hungry peasant children.

Such is Latin America at the beginning and even the middle of the century. Such is the explosive mixture that gave birth to this bright, original, unique talent. The "House of Spirits" is actually directly related to the family history. The novel was born from a letter that Isabel began writing to her ninety-nine-year-old grandfather after learning that he was dying. He, the patriarch, became the prototype of Esteban Trueb, a young man from a good but impoverished family, who set himself to get rich in order to become worthy of the beautiful daughter of a politician. Who dies by mistake after drinking poison intended for her father.

And now the unhappy groom is working obsessively, sparing neither himself nor others, to make the estate, ruined and abandoned by the idler father, an exemplary farm. It succeeds. Twenty years later. And then he marries the younger sister of the beautiful Rose, the girl who made a diary entry about the dog that sailed from across the sea. This is the beginning of the novel. Then there will be a lot of things and no less interesting.

Clara, a girl, and later the wife of the capitalist and politician Trueb, has pronounced psychic abilities. It does not bring her happiness. And universal love - yes. Because she is kind to people and pure in soul. "Clara" means "pure" from Spanish. Three generations of women in the family bear the talking names of Blanca - "white", daughter. And Alba, in general, is also a "white" granddaughter. There is a lot of beauty, kindness and intelligence, but little happiness. And as you wanted, you have to pay for everything in life.

It is unrealistic to retell a five-hundred-page novel, and most importantly, it is not necessary. He is good, he gives that degree of immersion in the realities of place-time, which makes you look around in surprise, looking up from reading: how, why here? a second ago you were in Chile! When I was reading, I had a map of Chile on my computer as a screensaver. Such a narrow and long country. So much pain and so much love. And now I'm learning Spanish. With a long-term goal to go, but with a near-term goal to read Isabel Allende in her language."House of Spirits" - because with this novel the reader's passion for Isabel Allende began. Not her first book, the first was "Eva Luna" two years earlier. That. what opened the era of the writer. By the summer of 2010, only three had been translated into Russian, to the two mentioned "Love and Darkness". But you don't have to read everything written by a person to understand - yours. Sometimes one short text is enough. Let's say that Signora Allende does not sin with short ones, but if long ones do not turn her away, then it is all the more worth it.

And for what it makes sense to be completely grateful - for the incentive to study Spanish. For someone, "the language of Cervantes", for me - first of all, Allende. and there was no question who to read - of course her, there's how many more untranslated. La Casa de los Espiritos is not in text format, an audiobook. I'm reading Ines del Alma Mia now, and a long-familiar novel is spinning in the background with an audiobook. And it's not like reading a text at all.

The language from the voice is generally more difficult to understand. You will not stop at an unfamiliar word, you will not look into the dictionary; you will not slow down, focusing on the phrase in order to pull the meaning out of context. Speech flows-flows-flows and then either keep up, or give up hope, everyone here... No, I won't lie - I don't have time. I snatch out individual words and expressions in conjunction with names, trying to compare: it's probably about these events, and then about those.

Barbarism? Perhaps, although if you manage to run through the corresponding piece in Russian with your eyes, the level of understanding of what you have heard makes a cosmic leap. So after all, when communicating with native speakers in everyday situations, we assume what will be discussed, we tune in in advance, everything is backed up by facial expressions and pantomimics. Therefore, an audiobook as an aid to learning a language is far from the worst possible option. You will definitely not find such lexical wealth in everyday conversations.

I was very lucky with a girl who read Pony Olga, whoever she is, pronounces the words quite clearly and generally without emotion, but cleanly and her timbre is pleasant. And she rhythmically breaks up huge sentences, to which Allende is prone, into groups of five to ten words, delimited by pauses. And, in general, by the middle of the book, it is much easier to understand Spanish from the voice than at the beginning. I recommend it.

"Баррабас появился в доме, приплыв по морю", - написала в своем дневнике маленькая девочка. Открыв этой фразой историю семьи, вплетенную и переплетенную с историей страны. Четыре поколения семьи Труэба. Весь, за малыми исключениями, чилийский двадцатый век. Эта фраза открыла миру и творчество Исабель Альенде, "Дом духов", которым она начинается, стал первым романом писательницы, принесшим ей оглушительный успех.

Исабель Альенде - племянница президента Сальвадора Альенде, свергнутого и убитого в ходе путча, возглавляемого Аугусто Пиночетом. Более голубой крови, белой кости (в реалиях отдельно взятой латиноамериканской страны) и представить себе трудно. Промышленники и политики в родне, учеба в престижных учебных заведениях, усвоенная с юности привычка к вращению в престижных кругах. И детство, проведенное в деревне, игры с чумазыми голодными крестьянскими детьми.
Такова Латинская Америка начала и даже середины века. Такова гремучая смесь, породившая этот яркий, самобытный, уникальный талант. "Дом духов", на самом деле прямо связан с историей семьи. Роман родился из письма, которое Исабель начала писать своему девяностодевятилетнему деду, узнав, что он при смерти. Он, патриарх, стал прототипом Эстебана Труэба, юноши из хорошей, но обедневшей семьи, положившего себе разбогатеть, чтобы стать достойным прекрасной дочери политика. Которая погибает, по ошибке выпив яд, предназначенный отцу.
И теперь уже несчастный жених одержимо трудится, не жалея ни себя, ни других, чтобы сделать разоренное и брошенное некогда бездельником-отцом имение образцовым хозяйством. Это удается. Спустя двадцать лет. И тогда он женится на младшей сестре красавицы Розы, той девочке, что сделала дневниковую запись о псе, приплывшем из-за моря. Таков зачин романа. Дальше будет много всего и не менее интересно.

Клара, девочка, а в дальнейшем жена капиталиста и политика Труэба, обладает выраженными экстрасенсорными способностями. Счастья ей это не приносит. А всеобщую любовь - да. Потому что добра к людям и чиста душой. "Клара" - "чистая" с испанского. Три поколения женщин семьи носят говорящие имена Бланка - "белая", дочь. И Альба, в общем, тоже "белая" - внучка. Красоты, доброты и ума много, счастья мало. А как вы хотели, за все в жизни надо платить.

Пересказать пятисотстраничный роман нереально, а главное - не нужно. Он хорош, он дает ту степень погружения в реалии места-времени, которая заставляет удивленно оглядываться, отрываясь от чтения: как, почему тут? секунду назад ты был в Чили! Когда читала, у меня на компьютере заставкой стояла карта Чили. Такая узкая и длинная страна. Столько боли и столько любви. А сейчас учу испанский. С дальней целью поехать, но с ближней - читать Исабель Альенде на ее языке.

4.5/5

Esteban, Trueba,
how does your childhood grow?
With fear and guilt and such hard work
and a love that leaves you low.
In thoughts of grief and thoughts of rage,
and a slump of of broken land,
you will rape your heart out, Esteban,
set life to your demand.

Clara, Clara, clairvoyant,
how does your marriage keep?
With magic silent and so near,
to where your children sleep.
When tragedy has struck your home,
and the bull is in the shop,
reality will find you there,
your disengagement stop.

Humans, humans, high and low,
what does your life move toward?
To riches spun in paradise,
And poor ones marching forward.
When man must strain for food and work,
and women for their life,
the wealth grows lazy in its keep,
and tensions run in strife.

Politics, politics,
what are your true names?
The search for living fair and true,
the beasts of power games.
When fear drives sides to action,
and both believe in might,
lands will burn in suffering;
no one escapes the light.

Esteban, Trueba,
you've lived a life of pride,
planted seeds of cruel revenge,
and harvested in stride.
You are old now, Esteban,
what has your life earned?
A ghost, a house, a granddaughter;
all are scorched and burned.

Esteban, Trueba,
how does your country grow?
With driving out the communists,
or dictators and woe?
When tragedy has snuffed your pride,
and your path is lost in fear,
you'll find your guidance, Esteban;
redemption gathers here.

Reader, reader, reading here,
what is this story read?
A tale of individuals,
Small strainings birthed for dead?
It is one and it is all,
growing evermore,
family framed society;
history at its core.

Reader, reader, what is life,
how does one tell it true?
With torture, fear, and oftentimes,
death of all you knew.
And yet life keeps, and yet life goes,
and strength is found in you,
men of hope, women strong,
love and laughter too.

آخراش دیگه داشتم نفسمو حبس میکردم
اینو میدونم که برای تمام شخصیتهای کتاب دلم تنگ میشه

100 Years of Solitude except not boring, is what Isabel Allende's 1982 landmark of magical realism is. Like Gabriel Garcia Marquez's epic, it follows several cyclic generations of a family through the history of a country. But it has an immediacy that 100 Years, with its frustrating mist, lacks; the story is better. It's a better book; it's the best book in the magical realism genre I've read.

South American literature is different from the rest - no, seriously, it is, I know that's a huge generalization and some South American books are just like other books, but when you read the big towering classics from South America they feel different, and the difference is magic. (Also violence, but that's a trait all colonized literature shares.)

We talk about magical realism a lot; that's a patronizing term meaning that it's just like real literature except with magic. It's patronizing to fantasy books, not to South Americans, although to be fair most fantasy is pretty lame. The defining magical realism book is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude (Colombia, 1967), which is - did I mention this? - boring.

The magic starts way farther back than that, though, in a metafictional world of dark wizards that's even more compelling for me. This is the world of the mighty Borges (Argentina, 1940s or so), Julio Cortazar (Argentina, 1960s), dazzling Clarice Lispector (Brazil, 1960s), and the grandfather of it all is sly Machado De Assis (Brazil, late 1800s), who once wrote a chapter called "Let us proceed to the chapter."

Then Roberto Bolano's 2666 blew everything up, but that's a different story. In the meantime we have House of the Spirits (Chile, 1982), which is the best magical realist novel ever written, and believe me because I've read, like...four or so of them.

The story follows three generations of women in the Trueba family: clairvoyant Clara, who marries anger-afflicted Esteban Trueba; their daughter Blanca, who carries on a secret affair with Pedro Terces Garcia, the son of Trueba's foreman; their daughter Alba, another mystic of sorts. They have a tendency to create fantastic creatures, out of cloth or clay or anything. Other characters include Clara and Esteban's twins Jaime the socialist doctor and Nicolas the guru; Trueba's bastard by rape Esteban Garcia; Pablo Neruda, himself; and one of the best dogs in literature, Barrabas. There are even more, but you will have no trouble keeping everyone straight, because Allende is a fantastic writer.

Along the way Allende tells the story of Chile and its fight for socialism. All the characters are affected by the turmoil; each is forced to pick a side. This heats up around the three quarter mark, and if you thought the book was engaging before, which you did, you'll be riveted for the last part. It's tough going - I've already mentioned rape and there's no shortage of it, along with some child molestation and some torture. (And, if you're curious, even a hot consensual adult sex scene or three.) Again, the other ongoing theme of South American novels is violence, which is always present and gets increasingly horrifying as we go.

The house itself is not the Trueba ranch in the country, Tres Marias, but their house in town that Trueba builds and then is knocked down by an earthquake and then is rebuilt again, and each time is slowly transformed by the Trueba women into a labyrinth, for various reasons - Clara responds to spirits, Alba is hiding political refugees, but it is always described as a labyrinth, which I imagine is a nod to Borges.

And like a labyrinth, the entire intricate structure fits together perfectly in ways you couldn't have imagined. There are twists and turns and sometimes you find yourself in a passage you swear you've been in before, and sometimes you think all is lost, and suddenly you're out, bewildered but exhilarated. What kind of architect dreamed this thing up? What just happened? Who knows, but it was magic.

There’s a quote in The House of the Spirits that stuck with me when one of the characters is discussing the fact that each family has someone that’s a little… off the wall. In their family however?? “No. Here the madness was divided up equally and there was nothing left over for us to have our own lunatic.”

And that’s the perfect way to describe this book! The lives of generations of the Trueba family, a family full of eccentric characters. I adored Allende’s beautiful writing and the magical realism that she infused into the narrative is breathtaking. It really reminded me of One Hundred Years of Solitude!

It’s quite a female dominant story, although they are all connected through Esteban Trueba, the matriarch of the family. Their story is set against a backdrop of politics and history - it’s not an area of history that I know much of at all, but my lack of knowledge didn’t detract from the story - it just made me want to learn more.

I’m so glad @the.storygraph book club finally made me pick this one up! Some of the characters go down pretty dark paths, but Allende’s writing is consistently STUNNING. 4.5 stars.