anscheinend gibt es auch in büchern von autorinnen männer mit fragilen egos, nur dass in dieser geschichte eine psychotherapie geholfen hat, scheint was dran zu sein…

man verbringt die erste hälfte seines lebens damit, sachen anzuschaffen, und in der zweiten versucht man, sich von ihnen zu trennen, sagte sie.

„findest du, dass ich alt aussehe, mama?“ „älter als im vergangenen jahr, aber jünger als im nächsten, so gott will“

I liked this very much on a section by section level, but the book as a whole left me a little cold. It was quite sprawling, which I'm not overly fond of when I don't see a reason for it, and I often wondered what the overall arc was really doing. It felt lost and wandering sometimes. Then the ending just felt tacked on, like we just had the story of a life and someone trying to fix everything in the last small number of pages. I liked the characters and the story and the development along the way, but once it started to build to more I didn't like where the author tried to go with it. It seemed like there were some good ideas but only unsatisfying things to do with them.

I had read Allende's book, Zorro, which I liked very much. So I thought I'd give this one a try. It was very disappointing - excruciating detail and way too many characters. It was difficult to feel engaged with any but the main 2 characters because of the quantity of people and their stories. And there were some characters who made a 2-page appearance and were never heard from again. That's real life - we sometimes have very brief interactions with people. But it makes for a frustrating read. It was also a depressing story; I got the sense that some of the misery was just thrown in to make the trials and tribulations of the main characters more trying. But the result was too much. There was an attempt at the end to pull the strings together, but it didn't work very well. Not a book I'd recommend except to diehard Allende fans.

This book was recommended to me via a friend back in September 2008 by a wonderful and beautiful Dominican women in New York who stated Isabel Allende's books were fascinating and well written.

Since then I have read at least 5 of Allende's books and have also found them in Spanish to give to people as presents.

The crux of the story is about a boy who travels with his sister and mother, and the adventures and explorations he gets up, right into his adult lifetime.

I actually own three copies of this book, and lend out to people sparingly.

This is very much a self-help book written in a flowing heartfelt manner, that you full understand and sympathize with the characters in all its unraveling details. Straight after reading this I read Dan Millmans Way Of The Peaceful Warrior (which i thought wasn't as entertaining as this book) as it is based on similar patterns of plot arc.

I would however recommend anybody to pick up this book and read it for a different style of writing but due to its very visual content and ideas, once you start to read you won't want to put it down.