on
3.5/5
Non-Fiction
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Read for AP Lit Summer Reading
Rating: 4/5
Pages: 481
Started: 31 August 2022
Finished: 4 September 2022
Summary:
Clara has always been able to speak to spirits and to tell the future. So she knows exactly when the fiancee of her deceased sister will arrive to marry her. She knows how to protect her daughter and the thriving bustle of her household from her husbands anger. And she knows, even beyond the grave, that her granddaughter must persevere through the fear and torture of the Chilean dictatorship in order to tell her story. The House of Spirits follows three generations of a Chilean family: their love, their pain, their magic, and the changes they make on the world.
Thoughts:
Though this book is more or less realistic fiction, it feels more like an epic than anything else. Both its scope and its level of detail create an effect of grandiosity that's hard to ignore. I didn't like the language of this book as much as that of Eva Luna--I think the different translator used a style that was less poetic--but the plot of the novel was just as fascinating. Each character was so multifaceted and detailed that the book almost felt like a biography. One of my favorite parts was how different characters or events came full circle. For example, Esteban Trueba's first child became extremely important, despite being the result of an unwanted pregnancy. My favorite character was Clara, especially closer to the end of her life, because she knew the future and thus was never unsure about what she had to do. I liked the way she protected her daughter and hosted lively meetings of people involved in magic, and I loved the fact that she never really left her family, even after death.
There were a few things in this book that were a little hard to take: the casualness of rape, especially the rape of lower-class people (even after being sexually assaulted herself, Alba never expressed understanding toward the peasant women whom her grandfather raped). Esteban Trueba was also a really hard character to read, because his anger was so toxic and yet people, especially his granddaughter, just waited until he had calmed down and then went to comfort him. As a grown man, Trueba should have been able to not throw fits like a toddler, and so the fondness and tolerance of those around him was frustrating. But that was also one of the cleverest parts of the book. Characters were portrayed as sympathetic and then moments later were shown, without any sympathy, as doing horrible things. While it was frustrating, the truthfulness and lack of a reliable opinion from a narrator added a clever layer to a book that felt more like a family history than a novel.
I'm very glad I read this book. I might want to re-read Eva Luna soon, since it reminded me how much I love Allende's work.
Words:
Impalpable (adj) unable to be felt by touch
Lugubrious (adj) looking or sounding sad and dismal
Concupiscence (n) strong sexual desire
Oligarch (n) a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence
Parsimoniously (adj) unwilling to spend money or use resources; stingy or frugal
Despotic (adj) tyrannical
Diaphanous (adj) light, delicate, and translucent
Proselytes (n) a person who has converted from one opinion, religion, or party to another
Coreligionists (n) an adherent of the same religion as another person
Extant (adj) still in existance
Expiation (n) the act of making amends or reparation for guilt or wrongdoing
Bucolic (adj) relating to the pleasant aspects of the countryside and country life
Avarice (n) extreme greed for wealth or material gain (AH-vuh-ris)
Laconism (n) using very few words
Sinecure (n) a position requiring little or no work but giving the holder status or financial benefit
Excoriated (v) censure or criticize severely
Analysis