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By Gabriela Garcia

• Published Jan. 31, 2022 Updated Feb. 2, 2022

VIOLETA By Isabel Allende Translated by Frances Riddle

“In this country there are always calamities, and it’s not hard to connect them to some life event,” the 100-year-old Violeta writes to a shadowy figure in Isabel Allende’s new novel. Violeta could as easily be describing the epistolary epic that frames her own life, which is also rife with calamity: the dissolution of a family fortune, a tempestuous marriage interspersed with love affairs, the machinations of family and friends over a century, all set against political upheaval in her homeland, an unnamed Latin American country.

Bookended by pandemics — the Spanish flu and the Covid crisis — “Violeta” chronicles a feminist awakening amid twin repressive forces, the state and the domestic sphere, in passages whose sheer breadth is punctuated by sometimes stilted, explanatory dialogue. When Violeta drops a subtle callback to “The House of the Spirits,” revealing that she is related to its protagonist, one might crave the inventive details that made Allende’s debut novel an icon of post-Boom Latin American literature: “Grandmother Nívea … had been decapitated in a terrifying automobile accident and her head was lost in a field; there was an aunt who communed with spirits and a family dog that grew and grew until it was the size of a camel.” This novel forgoes such chimeras in favor of headline realism in a stylistically straightforward translation; there are no more camel-dogs, only Violeta’s compellingly unsentimental gaze as she recounts the brutality of a fascist coup, her angst over the disappearance of her son, a political exile, and her fraught relationship with his father — who, she later discovers, may have had a hand in both (later she discovers he operated “death flights” of political prisoners to torture centers).

This middle section, the novel’s strongest, chronicles the events leading to dictatorship in a country much like Chile, with a dictator much like Pinochet, in unflinching, breezy prose that narrows its focus to the class and gender tensions playing out in daily life. Violeta offers humorous reprieves and no-nonsense ruminations — she doesn’t like children (“the only good thing about kids is that they grow fast”), resents men whose “success can be attributed” to her (“while he researched, experimented, wrote … I took care of the domestic expenses and saved”), finds marriage stifling (“as uneventful as life in a nunnery”) and deplores the double standards that brand her “the adulteress, the concubine, the wayward lover.”

When Violeta finally considers her own passive collusion with the regime, having amassed wealth and led a comfortable life while a country bled around her, I wished for some of the same perspicacity. “You live in a bubble, mom,” Violeta’s rebellious son says to her at one point, and a hundred years of reflection does not fully pierce it; Violeta’s political growth does not extend to thorny racial and economic considerations. Violeta’s naïve, sometimes colonialist lens results in a reckless romanticism: “The mix of races is very attractive,” she writes earnestly about one mestiza acquaintance. She praises her grandson’s missionary work in Congo “in a community that was no more than a trash heap before you got there,” and while admitting her ignorance (“I didn’t know anything about Africa … I was incapable of distinguishing one country from another”) fails to recognize the saviorism and essentialism behind her praise. Violeta’s reckoning leads to the development of a foundation to support survivors of domestic violence — but a conclusion that “if you truly want to help others, you’re going to need money” is circular logic that feels like a watery offering on a blood-soaked altar, a quiet tiptoe off the page after a careful rendering of the political graveyards that haunt Latin America’s psyche.

Gabriela Garcia is the author of the award-winning novel “Of Women and Salt.”

VIOLETA By Isabel Allende Translated by Frances Riddle 322 pp. Ballantine Books. $28.

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by Isabel Allende ; translated by Frances Riddle ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 25, 2022

A slog even Allende fans may have trouble getting through.

In a rueful account written for her grandson, a 100-year-old South American woman recalls her tumultuous life.

Born during the Spanish flu pandemic, Violeta Del Valle spends her early years quarantined with her well-off family in the capital of an unnamed country (one that resembles Allende's native Chile). With her mother ill, she is largely raised by her warm-spirited, independent-minded Irish governess. The family fortunes gutted by the Great Depression, her father kills himself (Violeta discovers his body). While living in relative isolation in the country, she meets and marries a German veterinarian whose life is mostly about finding a way to preserve the semen of pure-bred bulls. Tired of playing the submissive wife, Violeta, in a heated scene that could be a parody of romance novels, is swept off her feet by a dashing but soon abusive Royal Air Force ace of Latin American origins who runs guns for the Mafia and performs missions for the CIA. "Held together by a perpetual cycle of hate and lust," even when he takes up with another woman, the couple—though Violeta remains legally married to the vet throughout—has a son whose sensitive nature doesn't sit well with his macho father and a daughter who will become a drug addict. While there's no lack of incidence in this chronological epic, which is punctuated by glancing references to historical events including the rise of military takeovers, Allende's reductive style deprives the book of narrative power. For all she goes through, Violeta is thinly drawn—her great business success as a home builder seems tossed in like an afterthought. And the "floods, drought, poverty, and eternal discontent" she refers to are kept offstage.

Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-593-49620-6

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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by Isabel Allende ; translated by Frances Riddle

by Isabel Allende

by Isabel Allende ; translated by Nick Caistor & Amanda Hopkinson

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New York Times Bestseller

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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by Kristin Hannah

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BOOK TO SCREEN

by Percival Everett ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 2024

One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.

Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as told from the perspective of a more resourceful and contemplative Jim than the one you remember.

This isn’t the first novel to reimagine Twain’s 1885 masterpiece, but the audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey, shifting the central viewpoint from that of the unschooled, often credulous, but basically good-hearted Huck to the more enigmatic and heroic Jim, the Black slave with whom the boy escapes via raft on the Mississippi River. As in the original, the threat of Jim’s being sold “down the river” and separated from his wife and daughter compels him to run away while figuring out what to do next. He's soon joined by Huck, who has faked his own death to get away from an abusive father, ramping up Jim’s panic. “Huck was supposedly murdered and I’d just run away,” Jim thinks. “Who did I think they would suspect of the heinous crime?” That Jim can, as he puts it, “[do] the math” on his predicament suggests how different Everett’s version is from Twain’s. First and foremost, there's the matter of the Black dialect Twain used to depict the speech of Jim and other Black characters—which, for many contemporary readers, hinders their enjoyment of his novel. In Everett’s telling, the dialect is a put-on, a manner of concealment, and a tactic for survival. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” Jim explains. He also discloses that, in violation of custom and law, he learned to read the books in Judge Thatcher’s library, including Voltaire and John Locke, both of whom, in dreams and delirium, Jim finds himself debating about human rights and his own humanity. With and without Huck, Jim undergoes dangerous tribulations and hairbreadth escapes in an antebellum wilderness that’s much grimmer and bloodier than Twain’s. There’s also a revelation toward the end that, however stunning to devoted readers of the original, makes perfect sense.

Pub Date: March 19, 2024

ISBN: 9780385550369

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024

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by Percival Everett

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‘Violeta’ Review: An Average Novel from an Above Average Author

With 25 best-selling novels and a Presidential Medal of Freedom, it is no secret that Isabel Allende is a literary tour de force. Her latest work, “Violeta,” gives her fans many of the hallmarks they have come to expect from the author: heart-wrenching but honest depictions of the Pinochet regime and complex, interwoven, endlessly interesting family dynamics. But that’s just the problem. Allende’s prolific abilities become repetitive in “Violeta,” ultimately producing a book that loses itself in monotonous historical scenes and rotating characters, and which fails to stand out in any specific way.

“Violeta” is a bildungsroman that follows the life of its eponymous character from birth until near-death, a period of 100 years. Violeta lives a thoroughly whirlwind life. She marries three different men, experiences the rise and fall of Chilean President Salvador Allende (Isabel Allende’s own godfather), the subsequent military Junta and its aftermath, and raises two children to adulthood. She also starts a housing materials empire, and lives a life of adventure and intrigue until she predicts she will die in 2020.

The challenge with a story that tracks one character through so many years is that the plot is necessarily as meandering as a life. There is no climax nor much rhythmic flow to the story, merely milestones in a long series of episodes. On top of that, the story is written as an account that Violeta is telling Camilo, her grandson and adopted son. The compounded plot-as-life and the feedback loop created by the main-character-as-narrator structure gives the story a didactic mood. Violeta appears to edit herself, inserting pithy aphorisms and bits of advice rather than lush description. This style, heavy with “telling” and light on the “showing” becomes exhausting as the reader endures literally one hundred years of Violeta’s thoughts.

A lot of buzz surrounding this book was due to the fact that it is one of the first books written during the coronavirus pandemic to include it as a historical event. This advance is somewhat misleading, as Covid-19 only appears at the very end of the story as a neat bookend for Violeta’s childhood in the aftermath of the Spanish Flu outbreak of the early 1920s. Over the course of her lifetime, Violeta lives through many important political and historical events, including pandemics, wars, and natural disasters. Ultimately, however, the mix of historical evidence and personal anecdotes are crudely blended, causing the narrative to fundamentally lack cohesion.

In the acknowledgements section of “Violeta,” Allende references Wikipedia as an invaluable source. The issue is that “Violeta” reads, at times, like an embellished Wikipedia page, taking well-known scenes of Chilean history and inserting random personal details that could plausibly be attributed to one of the many characters in this novel. For example, Violeta hears about a neighbor being abused by her husband and creates an entire foundation to support survivors of abuse that becomes nationally recognized. The reader never knows why Violeta is so moved by this neighbor’s story, nor how she created an entire foundation, nor does her apparent life’s work take more than a sidebar role in the overall narrative. The episode appears to exist only so that Allende can conveniently comment on bureaucratic corruption in Chile post-Pinochet. Or when Violeta’s daughter, Nieves, becomes embroiled with drugs and sex trafficking in Las Vegas, it feels more like a crude attempt to situate the timeline in the 1970s than meaningful plot development.

It is hard to categorize “Violeta” because, like much of Allende’s work, the scope is staggering. To address an entire life in 319 pages is a significant undertaking. Violeta herself also eludes definition. From a petulant child to a wise grandmother, the reader watches her develop as the decades pass. Allende doesn’t shy away from life’s more difficult moments, like when Violeta experiences multiple familial tragedies, and is liberal in her depiction of more private moments. Violeta is a sexual woman well into her old age, which is refreshing and empowering, but Allende’s liberalism can be contradictory and problematic. When Violeta speaks of her sexuality, it is mostly to explain her connection to the current man of her life; she only feels beautiful if a man desires her. The story’s token queer couple, Josephine Taylor and Teresa Rivas, seem to exist to merely appeal to audiences in 2022 rather than as a worthwhile story in their own right. Make no mistake, fiction written in 2022 does not need to be “liberal” or to have certain representation or morals or anything of the sort to be valuable. But at times, “Violeta” seems too preoccupied with appealing to a certain audience than telling a cohesive story.

Overall, “Violeta” is an impressive undertaking that combines a century of history into a relatively slim novel. However, a lack of narrative flow and its rote similarity to Allende’s other, more complicated works makes this book a step below the masterful literary fiction that made her famous.

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Review: Allende’s ‘Violeta,’ an epic South American tale

This cover image released by Ballantine shows “Violeta” by Isabel Allende. (Ballantine via AP)

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“Violeta,” by Isabel Allende. (Random House)

Chilean writer Isabel Allende’s latest novel is “Violeta,” an epic tale that transports readers across a century of South American history, through economic collapse, dictatorship and natural disasters like an earthquake and a hurricane.

From the aftermath of World War I to the present day, narrator Violeta del Valle recounts the story of her life in an unnamed South American country with a book-long letter to her grandson Camilo.

Violeta tells of living through the Spanish flu pandemic as the youngest child and only daughter in a family of five sons. After her father loses everything in the Great Depression, the family must relinquish their comfort in an old mansion in the nation’s capital and adopt a more modest life in the country’s rural south.

“Violeta” recalls Allende’s best known and highly successful novel, “The House of Spirits,” which weaves together the personal and the political in a saga stretching across decades.

“Violeta” also details the horrors of the 1970s dictatorships in South America, which saw tens of thousands of suspected political opponents kidnapped, tortured and killed, often through Operation Condor, a U.S.-backed alliance among the region’s right-wing military governments.

“The government was committing atrocities, but you could walk down the street and sleep soundly at night without worrying about common criminals,” Violeta writes of those repressive times.

Violeta’s son is a journalist who seeks exile, first in Argentina, then in Norway after learning he is on the dictatorship’s black list.

Violeta suspect’s her son’s father of involvement in the repression through his work as a pilot. Much of the book involves Violeta’s long, passionate, but troubled relationship with her son’s father following a short, unsatisfying marriage. Ultimately, she obtains contentment late in life with a retired diplomat and naturalist.

Considered the world’s most widely read Spanish-language author, Allende is known for her many novels including “Eva Luna,” “Of Love and Shadows“ and “A Long Petal of the Sea,” as well as nonfiction books such as “Paula,” a 1994 memoir.

Allende left Chile for exile two years after Salvador Allende, her father’s first cousin, was overthrown in a 1973 coup. Isabel Allende lived for years in Venezuela before settling in the United States.

Review: Violeta by Isabel Allende

Man, I’ve wanted to read Isabel Allende in forever! I finally made time to read her upcoming release, Violeta . Thanks NetGalley and Ballantine Books for letting me read this one in advance.

Want to see more 2022 historical fiction? Check out 2022 Historical Fiction: Huge List of New Releases .

Violeta Summary

Violeta comes into 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 come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses all and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. There, she will come of age, and her first suitor will come calling. . . .

She tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, times of both 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.

Told through the eyes of a woman whose unforgettable passion, determination, and sense of humor will carry her through a lifetime of upheaval, Isabel Allende once more brings us an epic that is both fiercely inspiring and deeply emotional.

Wow, there was a lot to this book. It’s the story of an entire lifetime, so there’s definitely a lot to get through!

I loved the beginning of Violeta . Her life as a child was so incredibly interesting, and I found myself feeling sad when the story continued and she was older. I loved the story of the woman who comes to her home as a nanny…their relationship is fascinating, and continues to be that way throughout the book.

While I was really engaged for about the first half of this book, the second half didn’t shine as brightly for me. It’s certainly an incredible story, and there’s no doubt that Isabel Allende is an experienced, immersive storyteller. I’ve heard good things about other books of hers (specifically A Long Petal of the Sea ), and I would like to pick up one of those.

Violeta , though, gets a little bit too mired in politics for me. I enjoyed reading about the politics of a region I don’t know as much about, but the story got too focused there for me, with longer descriptions about what was going on with the politics in multiple countries. I like a side of politics with my stories…this verged too far into the political content for me.

That said, the fact that Allende fit this whole beautiful life into one book is pretty amazing, and just further shows what kind of an experienced storyteller she is. That part worked for me, as there weren’t any gaps that were too big or storylines/relationships that get lost. Super impressed with the whole layout of the story.

So, while I was really into the story at times, I got a bit bored at other times. Overall it’s a good read, and I’d like to pick up another of Allende’s books very soon. 3.5 stars from me for Violeta .

I'm currently a full-time writer/content strategist with an English degree living in Minneapolis, MN. I created Literary Quicksand to feed my love of books, writing, and community. More About Me

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Review: Allende’s ‘Violeta,’ an epic South American tale

Isabel allende's latest novel is "violeta" transports readers across a century of south american history, through economic collapse, dictatorship and natural disasters like an earthquake and a….

Isabel Allende’s latest novel is “Violeta” transports readers across a century of South American history, through economic collapse, dictatorship and natural disasters like an earthquake and a hurricane.

Chilean writer Isabel Allende’s latest novel is “Violeta,” an epic tale that transports readers across a century of South American history, through economic collapse, dictatorship and natural disasters like an earthquake and a hurricane.

From the aftermath of World War I to the present day, narrator Violeta del Valle recounts the story of her life in an unnamed South American country with a book-long letter to her grandson Camilo.

Violeta tells of living through the Spanish flu pandemic as the youngest child and only daughter in a family of five sons. After her father loses everything in the Great Depression, the family must relinquish their comfort in an old mansion in the nation’s capital and adopt a more modest life in the country’s rural south.

“Violeta” recalls Allende’s best known and highly successful novel, “The House of Spirits,” which weaves together the personal and the political in a saga stretching across decades.

“Violeta” also details the horrors of the 1970s dictatorships in South America, which saw tens of thousands of suspected political opponents kidnapped, tortured and killed, often through Operation Condor, a U.S.-backed alliance among the region’s right-wing military governments.

By Isabel Allende

Random House

336 pages, $24.99

“The government was committing atrocities, but you could walk down the street and sleep soundly at night without worrying about common criminals,” Violeta writes of those repressive times.

Violeta’s son is a journalist who seeks exile, first in Argentina, then in Norway, after learning he is on the dictatorship’s blacklist.

Violeta suspect’s her son’s father of involvement in the repression through his work as a pilot. Much of the book involves Violeta’s long, passionate but troubled relationship with her son’s father following a short, unsatisfying marriage. Ultimately, she obtains contentment late in life with a retired diplomat and naturalist.

Considered the world’s most widely read Spanish-language author, Allende is known for her many novels, which include “Eva Luna,” “Of Love and Shadows” and “A Long Petal of the Sea,” as well as nonfiction books such as “Paula,” a 1994 memoir.

Allende left Chile for exile two years after Salvador Allende, her father’s first cousin, was overthrown as president in a 1973 coup. She lived for years in Venezuela before settling in the United States.

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Isabel Allende: ‘I still have the same rage’

The renowned author on the unfinished task of replacing the patriarchy, swapping 24,000 letters with her mother, and why she gives all her books away

I sabel Allende’s books have been translated into more than 42 languages and sold some 75m copies globally. Her career spans fiction and nonfiction, and she’s also created the Isabel Allende Foundation in memory of her daughter (who died in 1992), working to empower women and girls around the world. Her new novel, Violeta , spans 100 years and recounts the turbulent life and times of its South American heroine. Allende, 79, who was born in Peru and raised in Chile, spoke from the study of her home in California, where she writes daily.

How did Violeta begin? The idea started when my mother died, right before the current pandemic hit. She was born in 1920 when the influenza pandemic reached Latin America, so it was almost natural to have the two bookends of the novel be pandemics. When I write, I don’t have a plan and I don’t have a message – I just want people to come with me, to let me tell them a story.

Is its eponymous heroine based on your mother? Violeta is born in my mother’s social class, in the same time, in a place that many readers will identify as Chile. My mother was like her in the sense that she was beautiful, talented, visionary, but my mother was dependent. Violeta is someone who can make a living, and that makes such a huge difference. I’ve always said that there’s no feminism if you cannot support yourself and your children, because if you depend, then somebody else gives the orders.

Violeta is an epistolary novel, and your debut, The House of Spirits , sprang from a letter to your grandfather. Are you a great letter-writer? I used to write to my mum, and she would write to me, every single day for decades. My son hired a company to digitise the letters, and they calculated that there are about 24,000. Everything is there, my mother’s whole life, and also my life. But now that I don’t have my mum, I don’t have a daily record of the life I have lived each day, and I realise that my days go very fast.

How have you found the pandemic? I have been able to do a lot. In two years, I have published a feminist nonfiction book [ The Soul of a Woman ], I wrote Violeta , and then I wrote another novel about refugees that is being translated and published in 2023 probably. I have three things that all writers want: silence, solitude and time. But because of the work my foundation does with people at risk, I’ve been very aware that there is despair and violence and poverty. The first to lose their jobs were women, migrants.

You say in The Soul of a Woman that you were a feminist even before you knew the word . I was aware very young that it was not to my advantage to be born a female, but also I was very aware of social injustice. I was furious because the world was not fair.

Does injustice still make you as irate? Of course! I have the same rage I had then. I try to be as calm as possible and to meditate – it doesn’t work at all.

What is the feminist movement’s biggest unfinished task? The main unfinished task is to replace the patriarchy. We are chipping away pieces – too slowly in my opinion, because I won’t see it, but it will happen.

How do you feel about the recent election in Chile? Happy. The new president says all the things I want to hear about inclusion, diversity, justice. He’s 35 years old – he could be my grandson, and that is fantastic because it’s a new generation taking over finally.

What is it like to live largely in English and write in Spanish? You know, I find that I forget how to talk in Spanish, because there are certain things that I only say in English. I can write nonfiction in English, but fiction, no, because fiction flows in a very organic way. It happens more in the belly than in the brain.

What is the main difference between love off the page and on? In real life, all the inconveniences are sometimes greater than the conveniences. If you marry so late in life, as I’ve done, there is a lot of baggage that one carries around, but also a sense of urgency which makes the relationship, and every day, very precious.

Your recent marriage is your third. Did you expect that? Do you think that anybody expects to marry at 77? No! But then this man heard me on the radio and fell in love with me. The only reason we got married is because for him it was really important. The last straw was when his granddaughter, who was seven years old at the time, went to the librarian at school and said “Have you heard of Isabel Allende ?” And the librarian said: “Yes, yes, I’ve read some of her books.” There was a pause, and then Anna said: “She’s sleeping with my grandfather.”

Tell me about the decision to start writing all your books on 8 January … It was a superstition in the beginning but then my life got very complicated and now it’s discipline. I burn some sage, light my candles and spend my day with the door closed. Usually when I get out people have sent flowers and emails and boxes of orange peel covered with dark chocolate. That gives me strength and joy.

What books are on your bedside table? I am reading in print Anthony Doerr’s book Cloud Cuckoo Land . I’m listening on audio to Alice Hoffman’s The Marriage of Opposites . And then I have in my Kindle a book that I should have read a couple of years ago called The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason. It’s a war story and I don’t like war stories but this one is extraordinary.

How do you organise your books? I don’t. I give them away.

Every book? The only book that I have kept is the first gift that my stepfather gave me when I was 10 years old, The Complete Works of Shakespeare . I read it like a story and have had it ever since.

Is there a classic you’re ashamed of not having read? Probably The Brothers Karamazov . I got bored.

What kind of reader were you as a child? I belong to a generation where there was no television, the radio was forbidden by my grandfather because he said it had vulgar ideas, and we never went to the movies, so I was always a very good reader. In my teenage years, when I was so lonely and so enraged, my way of escaping from everything and myself was reading.

Has any title in particular stuck with you? I remember vividly when I was around 13 and we were living in Lebanon. Girls didn’t go anywhere – school and home, that was it. To give you an idea, I heard about Elvis Presley when he was already fat, so I skipped all that rock’n’roll and everything else. But my stepfather had an armoire that he kept locked because there he had whisky, chocolates, and I think Playboy . My brothers and I would open it; my brothers would eat whole layers of chocolates and I would go directly to four volumes of One Thousand and One Nights , kept there because it was supposed to be erotic. It was erotic, but I didn’t get it because everything was a metaphor and I didn’t know the basics. But I enjoyed so much that forbidden reading in the armoire – one day I will have to write about it.

Violeta by Isabel Allende (translated by Frances Riddle) is published by Bloomsbury (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply

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Book reviews | movie reflections | legal musings, book review: violeta by isabel allende.

Violeta. A hundred-year-old woman. A woman who has lived through two pandemics, two world wars, imperialism, colonialism, and post-colonialism. A woman who has seen the history unfolding before her eyes. A woman who has never let conventions stop her or forging forward in time to make her mark. Well, she must have something to tell when she decides to recount her life.

In September of 2020, Isabel Allende’s Violeta recounts her life in a long letter to someone named Camilo, someone she loves more than anyone in the world. Born on one stormy Friday in 1920 in Chile, Violeta del Valle is a hundred years old when she decides to pen down her life story that “is worthy of a novel, because of […] sins than […] virtues.”

A single girl in a family of five boys, she learns to carve out a space for herself at the very beginning of her life. Losing a family fortune, suffering an exile, luxuriating in a passionate love affair only to be undone by it in parts, experiencing a substantial amount of death and loss – Violeta’s life is indeed worthy of a novel with its fair share of calamities. A life exquisitely lived and suffered.

In the country where “[…] there are always calamities, and it’s not hard to connect them to some life event,” Violeta deftly converges the personal with the politics. Not only the global events but also the wars and events unfolding in her own country, Chile. However, it is the impact of politics on the character that propels the story forward.

Violeta’s life begins with an onslaught of Spanish Influenza followed by the Great War and the depression that followed. The Great Depression of 1929 changed the fortunes of many, Violeta’s father amongst them. The novel explores political commentary through the lives of its characters. Although the fall of the oppressive regime is a cause for celebration, it also brings along a tragedy. Embarrassed by bankruptcy and thwarted by the financial collapse, the Del Valle family goes into exile.

Although a time of personal trial for the family, Violeta finds greater freedom in her time of exile. For a while, she seems to have it all, from traveling to romancing a young German to building a business with her brother. But Violeta is not a conventional woman who wants to bask in the love of her husband. She was terrified at the prospect of having children as “it would be the end of my relative freedom.”

In the backdrop of Violeta’s awakening, the book also chronicles the rise and shaping of the feminist movement. The reader sees Violeta shaping her destiny. From being the woman who marries for a social convention to the woman who shamelessly gives in to the hedonistic pleasures of the body, thus, moving from the category of an angel to a homewrecker. “[…] Fabian and I made love in pitch-dark silence; I never imagined there were other options […] Julian ripped my dress off like a puma with two swipes of his hand, never even giving a chance to protest. […] I abandoned any hint of resistance, willing my body to come undone and melt in his arms.”

After amassing great wealth and status, Violeta’s political awakening is more forced by the events that affect her personally. When her son flees the country due to the oppression and horror unleashed by the ruling regime, Violeta finally realizes the horror of the dictatorship. Although never personally involved in the criminal enterprise of her lover, Julian, she remains a silent spectator even when she suspects that all is not right. In that sense, her later acts of charity feel rather too little, too late. And yet, this is also what makes her more real. She is no angel, and she does not pretend to be one.

Written spectacularly, the book by telling the story of one woman’s unconventional journey also reveals the history of a nation. What remains with the reader a long time after the book finishes, is Violeta’s lust for life. With her steely fortitude, she shapes and re-shapes herself. She writes the next chapter of her life at sixty when most would give up. It makes the book a worthy read – her passion and the strength to start anew.

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Violeta by Isabel Allende

• Publication Date: January 24, 2023
• Genres: Fiction , Historical Fiction
• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• ISBN-10: 0593496221
• ISBN-13: 9780593496220
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Violeta [English Edition]: A Novel Hardcover – January 25, 2022

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Print length 336 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Ballantine Books
• Publication date January 25, 2022
• Dimensions 6.5 x 1.08 x 9.54 inches
• ISBN-10 0593496205
• ISBN-13 978-0593496206
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ballantine Books; First U.S. Edition (January 25, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593496205
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593496206
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.26 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.08 x 9.54 inches
• #128 in Hispanic American Literature & Fiction
• #274 in 20th Century Historical Romance (Books)
• #4,684 in Literary Fiction (Books)

About the authors

Isabel allende.

Isabel Allende is one of the most widely read authors in the world, having sold more than seventy-seven million books. Born in Peru and raised in Chile, Isabel won worldwide acclaim in 1982 with the publication of her first novel, The House of the Spirits. Since then, she has authored more than twenty-six bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including Daughter of Fortune, Island Beneath the Sea, Paula, and The Wind Knows My Name.

In 1996, following the death of her daughter, Paula, Allende established a charitable foundation in her honor. The foundation has awarded grants to more than one hundred nonprofits worldwide, delivering life-changing care to hundreds of thousands of women and girls.

In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded Allende the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, and in 2018 she received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation. Allende lives in California.

Frances Riddle

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Julia's books

Sharing my passion for books with views, news and reviews

Book review – “Violeta” by Isabel Allende

I have a particular fondness for Isabel Allende. She is an icon of world literature, of global feminism, of how to embrace ageing and of the joy, beauty and depth of south American culture. In a week when the world said its goodbyes to one female icon (Queen Elizabeth II, regardless of what you think about monarchy, it was quite a moment) and were shocked to learn of the sudden death of another, this time from the world of literature (the terribly sad news of Hilary Mantel’s untimely passing), it seems appropriate to praise Allende and value her for all that she has given us. 

The last arts event I attended before most of the world went into lockdown on the brink of the Coronavirus pandemic, was a talk in Manchester between Allende and Jeanette Winterson on the publication of her last but one novel The Long Petal of the Sea . I enjoyed that book though I felt it was not among her best. Allende’s latest novel, Violeta, published earlier this year and written, one assumes, during the pandemic feels like that to me too. 

The central character, Violeta, is an elderly woman (almost 100 years old we will learn) writing a letter, memoir, for another character Camilo. We don’t know the connection between Violeta and Camilo until about halfway through the book and I’m not going to give any spoilers here, though we do know that she loves him “more than anyone else in this world”. The story begins with Violeta’s birth in 1920 at the time of the Spanish ‘flu outbreak in Chile. Her father committed suicide, after a series of failed business ventures brought him and his family to a situation of near penury, and it was Violeta who found his body.

Her childhood was spent mostly in a rural setting on a smallholding where she was educated in the school of life. The family was forced to flee there after they lost everything in the Depression. She grew up with her brother in the care of a poor family who showered her with love and protection. She married a man who was the son of affluent European hoteliers, but the marriage was largely sexless and doomed. When Violeta met the dashing Julian Bravo, a pilot, and a passionate lothario, she was immediately swept off her feet and left her husband. This brought disgrace upon her head, particularly as Julian refused to marry her, even when she bore him a son and a daughter. 

Julian lived life on the edge, having lots of money one minute and none the next, so although their relationship was initially a fulfilling one, it lacked stability. As a young woman it was clear that Violeta had business acumen so she set up a company with her brother in the construction industry and was very successful, able to support herself and her family without being dependent on her wayward lover. 

That is as much as I will say about the plot. The book is basically the story of a life so to tell you any more would be to give you a full synopsis! The life story it tells is an interesting one and Violeta certainly has an interesting life. She is also telling the story from the perspective of a person of a great age, so she is able to reflect on her mistakes as well as celebrate her life’s achievements. It is a pretty linear first-person narrative and that, for me, is where it disappoints. I have come to expect more of such a great writer and the book for me never really delivers. Throughout I was just wanting more. There is no doubt that Allende is a great storyteller and the interweaving of history into the narrative, the politics of south America in the twentieth century, the dictatorships, the terrors, the corruption and the sheltering of Nazis fleeing Europe, is fascinating and deftly done, but I just felt she was capable of more. Some parts of it are clumsy (for example the love scenes which made me squirm a little!) and some parts of it feel autobiographical (for example, Violeta’s views on feminism), almost as if Allende herself is writing a letter to her readers.  

I hope there is more to come from this wonderful author, and fans of Allende (and I count myself as one) will of course treasure every word she writes, but I do rather feel this book lacks some of her usual creative energy.  Perhaps that is a result of its having been written during a lockdown. My fellow book club members enjoyed it, and found its uncomplicated approach quite refreshing, especially as we read it over the summer. It also does have a rather neat symmetry, which you will see if you read it. 

Recommended if you like a good story that does not ask too much of a reader. 

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Author: Julia's books

Reader. Writer. Mother. Partner. Friend. Friendly. View all posts by Julia's books

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