Eva Luna (Spanish Language Edition)

Rating:
Summary: The author's use of magic realism will spur your imagination
Review: Are you looking to add some vivid color into your life? Isabel Allende's literary and highly imaginative writing style will captivate and and delight you in this highly visual and sensual novel. I found this book to be much better and less formulaic than the HOUSE OF SPIRITS was. The character is fully fleshed out and seems more real; perhaps because the protagonist is a woman, Eva Luna herself, and in the other book, Allende offers the narrative through a domineering and somewhat obtuse man's eyes. The growth of Eva Luna is beautifually told and readers will identify with her throughout. This evocative novel set my imagination on fire and made all the colors in my world appear brighter while I was reading it.

Rating:
Summary: Eva Luna
Review: Isabel Allende wrote Eva Luna in a way that would keep the readers wondering what happens next. I got trapped reading the story because I wanted to know what happened to the characters. Allende talked about a different character of the story until the last few chapters of the book and then she put them together. Every character that Allende wrote about in the book was somehow connected to the life of Eva Luna. By the time I got to the second chapter, I had already figured out the ending of the book, I thought.

Eva Luna's mother, Consuelo, brought up a good question when she talked to the nuns at the church where she had been sent: "Yes, but who had the say in heaven, God or his Mama?" For some reason that question just stuck in my mind. I think Allende wrote this in her story to show that Consuelo had a questioning mind, although people thought that she was silly. Eva Luna was six years old when her mother died, and she instantly became an orphan. A man said that he was going to leave Eva Luna everything, "Write in my will Pastor. I want this little girl to be my sole heir. Everything is to go to her when I die." Allende creates sympathy for Eva because the Pastor did not write in the will what the man had wanted for her. All of the people who worked in the man's house had ot go find more work for themselves. The government did not know of Eva Luna's existence until she got Riad Halabi to pay someone to get her some type of papers. Eva worked very hard when she was a little child. People said that they would teach her how to read, but they never seemed to have the time. When Eva finally learned how to write and read she said "Writing was the best thing that had happened to me in all my life; I was euphoric." Through out Eva's life she told stories to people who would listen to her. As she learned how to write, she started to write down her stories. She ended up being a writer as she became an adult. Allende has written a story that expresses a child's life and lets the readers watch her grow up. I got confused by some of the Spanish words that Allende used. There were a couple of other words that she used that confused me, but it did not take away from the book. I think that if I reread the book, I would pick up on things that I missed the first time. There was one time during the book that I was confused about the idenity of a couple of her characters. I had to go back and find whick name she used for a certain character when she would bring them back into the story.

Isabel Allende held my attention through out the book. I felt that I could relate to the characters of the story because I know how hard it is when you move from place to place. Allende gave me an excellent picture of what she was writting about. I liked the fact that she used a large cast of characters in her story. I think that it added to the book. I enjoyed reading about how hard it was for Eva Luna to receive an education, and what she did with it afterward.

Rating:
Summary: A good one by Allende
Review: Sometimes, actually pretty often, Isabel Allende's writing overflows with her own love of language, and you kinds want her to dial it down a little. Not so much, however, in Eva Luna. The writing is more controlled; the book reads as tho an editor actually paid some attention to it before sending it to press.
Child of a servant, the beautiful and enchanting Eva Luna escapes into lyrical storytelling when life gets too tough to bear. She and Rolf, a film maker, are brought together through Eva's guerrilla lover. The result is a lovely piece of literature that works as a metaphor for salvation through creativity.
It's a good one.

Rating:
Summary: Falls Short Of Other Works
Review: This novel definitely follows Allende's form of vast and varied characters, a plot covering an epic length of time, and Dickensian twists and turns.
But the main character is not as interesting or complex Greg Reeves in "The Infinite Plan," and the most areas of the plot simply lack the intense realism of "Plan" and "The House of Spirits."
The references to the metaphysical, world are devoid of the absolute wonder caused by works such as "Spirits." And worst of all, her prose, despite having Margeret Sayers Peden translating once again, does not have the same poetic ring.
There are, however, still moments in the novel that seem to illuminate any perception of life as dark or dull, thus giving relief to the low-effort and sometimes repetitive nature of the rest of the book.