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Summary: It captures your spirit as well as you inmagination
Review: This was the best book she ever wrote. I got to say this book captures your inner soul and puts you right in the middle of the scenes, like not other book can do.
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Summary: GREAT!
Review: I fell in love with "The house of the spirits", it's a fascinating book and the story is very well told. Read it, you'll be glad you did!
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Summary: The best book of the best writer
Review: Isabell Allende, is one and only. She draws Latin American societies at it's best. The House of Spirits summarizes just one of millions of Latin Families; but, captivates the essence of our struggles, believes and traditions. Sometimes you have to live in such societies to understand Allende, and if you do,as you read you'll see the development of a masterpiece and the flavor of perfection with it's conclution.
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Summary: Excelente!!
Review: Bravo!! Allende's first book and perhaps her best! "Excelente" story telling of the trials and tribulations of the Trueba family. I could not put the book down! A definate hit!!!
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Summary: Got me in the end
Review: I read this book on the train to & from work. Usually this leads to guilty snatches of reading in work, or longer periods of reading at home, but not in this case. Not that I didn't enjoy it, but I wasn't drawn in, UNTIL the last few chapters. Suddenly, I found myself deeply worried about the characters, and touched by their troubles. I was actually surprised when this happened. All-in-all a good book, but not as captivating as advertised. It would, however, be a crime to ban it from schools! If "book banners" have their way our schools will be limited to "Nancy Drew" and "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm."
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Summary: Riveting
Review: I could not put this book down. I was drawn into the Trueba family and had to know the outcome of Clara and her children and grandchildren. I was disturbed by the images and situations described by Allende, but they made me think about the present political situation in Central and South America. This book has made me want to learn more about our neighbors to the south.
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Summary: Edge of the seat!
Review: This book had me caught from the start, I first saw the movie based on the book, and absoultly loved it, I had to read the book, and it was worth all those hours I spent reading it. This novel illustrates the strong family bond that hispanic families have. There was never a moment of rambling, all the sentences fit together.
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Summary: Excellent
Review: I had to read this book for the IB program and I ended up loving it. It tells o fhow interconnected nature that family possessed. It tells of the trials adn tribulations of the Trueba family. Never boring an very touching.
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Summary: The Ends Do Not Justify the Means
Review: I read this book because a parent objected to its use in our school system; I have to cast my vote next Wednesday. Stripped of its liberal use of graphic sex to make it points, Allende's objectives are noble and courageous. "The House of the Spirits" could have been numbered with such classic protest works as "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. Political corruption, the evil land baron system and the ever-present machismo are worthy targets of the author's wrath. Unfortunately, the noble core of the book has been lost in the debate over the vivid descriptions of brutal aberrant sexual behavior. This is a shame.
Most of the sexual abnormality is pinned on the male characters; barely a man is left untarred by some reference to a sexual vice of varying seriousness. By the time this pattern was well established about mid-way through book, this male reader found he had to push on through discomfort and eventually indignation. The book definitely has a hard-edged feminist message undercurrent in the story.
Allende's talent as a story teller and painter in prose is evident from page one, but the brutal literary devices that are her staple are too much for me. I do not look forward to carrying the images this author has given me in my head for the next twenty years. Again, too bad. It could have been a noble work.
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Summary: Wonderfully crafted
Review: This book had me from the start. We read it in English ( it is required for the International Baccalaureate program) It is not a story of political struggle or good vs. evil, rather- it is a delicately woven tale of the many trials and tribulations of life.
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