Of Love and Shadows

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Summary: A moving tale of love and violence
Review: "Of Love and Shadows" is Isabel Allende's novel about life under military dictatorship in an unnamed Latin American country (the dictator is simply called "the General"). Margaret Sayers Peden has translated the Spanish original into a very readable English. Although the book was slow to grasp my close attention in the opening episodes, I ultimately found it to be a powerful and moving story of love in the midst of violence and fear.

Allende, who is Chilean, mixes a naturalistic style with several surreal touches in this novel. As the story progresses, her main characters investigate a disturbing mystery, and their ultimate discovery has a profound impact on several interconnected families. Allende uses this narrative framework to explore such issues as gender identity, philosophical conflict, religious difference, censorship, and the role of both the journalist and the soldier in the modern state. "Of Love and Shadows" is an important book for those interested in contemporary Latin American literature.

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Summary: It took the reader to the world of the dictatorship,exciting
Review: As a major in Spanish Literature, I believe that De amor y sombras takes the reader to the tumultous years of the dictatorship in South America. It not only detalils what occured in Chile but what occured in Argentina in the late 1970s and correlates to many situations that are occuring today in Latin American. This work not only relates the happenings of Latin American history but it also gives the reader a face to the dictatorship. Thus, it endears the reader to the situation. The love story that unravels is charming! The book was exciting and it kept me interested. This is the second book that I have read by Isabel Allende y ¡está muy bien hecho!

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Summary: disapointing
Review: I loved The House of Spirits and Daughter of Fortune, but Of Love and Shadows was disappointing. It amounted to a pretty predictable cheesy romance novel, rather than the complex, intriguing stories Allende is capable of.

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Summary: long lasting
Review: Isabelle Allende brings out extreme emotions of love, death, and pain in "of love and shadows". The love story displayed in this novel enitces the soul to search deeper into the emotion called love. The tragedies cuased by the depicted regime forces the reader to face the reality of human cruelty and the stench of death. As a political tool, this book proves its stripes. As a novel it lures the reader into its web that sticks to the mind long after that last word is read.

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Summary: Revelation of a world of pain
Review: Of Love and Shadows took me by surprise as a book that opened the eyes of an African American college student to many horrors and unspeakable crimes against humanity taking place in Chile under Dictator Pinochet. I was very pleased with the way reading at times captured my heart, by immersing me into the subject matter intimately. Ms. Allende tells the tale of lives that were taken, changed and controlled through acts of evil, evil that controlled the innocent people of a nation. The revelation of events that took place in Chile as told by Allende, lets the world know of the wrong, the torture that took place for many years. Allende does a superb job of leading the reader in, and teaching history a part of history that is sure to be remembered, especially by the families of those who were subjected to undue cruelty. Allende's informative story telling approach definitely reaches the hearts and minds of all who read Of Love and Shadows, regardless of who they are.

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Summary: Overall Pretty Good
Review: Somewhere, in a fake Latin American country, Irene and Francisco meet and fall in love in the midst of a military dictatorship. They discover murderous plots surrounding numerous characters that at first seem inconsequential but become very important. Unfortunately at times the plot is slow moving and uninteresting, but the overall take on the book is pretty good. I wouldn't read another Allende book for pleasure though.

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Summary: Horror And Beauty, A Perfect Balance
Review: This is the first novel that I read of Isabel Allende, and it will definitely not be my last. I began reading it as part of a class assignment, but it turned into more than that. I was not able to stop once I began. The horrible situation that these people lived in seems unreal, but it is something that needs to be told.
Isabel Allende is a captivating author that traps you in her novel. You are transmited into a world that is facinating and at the same time you are glad that you are not a part of. Without ever mentioning Pinochet, she captivates all of the emotions and fear that are present because of him. There are very strong and vivid scenes that force you to shudder with disbelief and fear. However, she seems to always bring about a balance of warmth and love after a horrible event. It seems that without these beautiful moments of relief the story would just be too unbareable. It is beautiful to be reminded that even in the worst circumstances love can be present and get you through unimaginable events. Isabell Allende has achieved all of this and much more through this novel. However, no matter what any of us say, you will not fully understand what all of the fuss is about untill you have read it. This is definitely not a novel that you want to miss.

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Summary: One of a kind book/storyline
Review: Thsi was the last Allende novel I read in a series of six one weeka nd though the story was straightforward after House of the Spirits and Eva's Stories/Eva Luna the attempt to present the revolution one more time didn't quite fly. It was so perfunctory in places and romantically dramatic that I got the feeling that it was a piece of a larger tapestry. Not necessarily the characters as in other Allende novels but the plot. I think either House has to be accepted by her (Allende) as her political country upheaval novel or she needs to make one that brings all of these pieces together into something like War and Peace. All of these fractuous pieces littered throughout other novels reduces the turmoil of a country's political upheaval to something as banal as a romance novel.
I also didn't feel that her characters developed as well as they did in others, there seems to be a point where the women do "something", change their outlooks and then kind of shutdown in a spiritual way. There's a powerful story, a strong character that needs to be glued together from all of these piece women that drift through her novels. I never get the feeling that one of her heroines is all that incredible for her surviving, more so of a bourgeois virginity lost in the turmoil. Of them all, a weak book. What might strengthen them in their entirety is readign them as a whole, I reccommend it as a way to really get to know an authors' work. Read half a dozen of their novels in one timeframe, it really changes your opinion when you're looking at rooms in a house instead of one exciting studio if you can understand my analogy.