Rating: 
Summary: I LOOOOOOVED IT
Review: This is one of the best books I've ever read. Isabell Allende has a natural talent for telling histories in a way that you only can stop the reading when you've finished it
Rating:
Summary: Entrancing, Enthralling
Review: The first few pages of this book ties you into the plot of the Truebas without a chance of return. This book, through my eleven hour straight reading, (I too read this book for school) not a second of my time was wasted. Thugh therte is emotion felt during Miller's "Death of a Salesman" the emotion felt in "House" is deep- rooted. One almost feels as if they are a part of the story byt he end of the book. One does not feel complete love or hate for any of the charachters, rather deep compassion. This is a Latin American soap opera, yet less structured and more artsy. There is no good vs.evil, just structured vs. unstructured. No matter what the battle, all disputes are passionate and as strong as any Earthquake that rumbles through Chile.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard to understand
Review: I believe this book was hard to understand. I read it in my english class and I could hardly follow along. There is too much description and my least favorite part of the book is with the Civil War. It wasn't very interesting the way Alba disobeyed her father. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic- Moving and Deep
Review: This book had me from page one. As a 16 year old reading the book for school, I was unsure what to expect. The dialogue, the plot, and the subtle undertones of distrust (in many things, including democratic government), interested me deeply. I highly recommend this book
Rating:
Summary: In a word, BRILLIANT!
Review: We read this book as a part of the International
Baccalureate program (high school) and if there's one consensus we have had as an entire class, it would
be that this is an A-grade book. You would be a fool
to miss it. This is not a story of the Trueba family or the changing political conditions in south America --- this is quite simply a story about life.
Rating:
Summary: Mesmerizing
Review: This book is truly an amazing journey through a unique and interesting family history. At times you feel like the numerous ghosts present throughout the story, wandering purposely in and out of the many characters lives. A very entertaining journey
Rating:
Summary: allende is amazing!!!!
Review: at first go, i thought house of the spirits was
a pure imitation of marquez's 100 years of solitude.
while the ideas of magical realism and a family
history are very marquez-esque, allende makes
the characters her own. they are loveable and
their stories are engrossing. allende's words and
ideas encompass the reader immediately and the story
moves quickly and beautifully. all in all, the novel
is inredible. the depiction of clara is incredible,
amazing and very real. there is nothing not too
love about this novel. the only thing that ruined
it for me was the resemblence to the marquez novel.
however, house of the spirits is definitely worth
reading.
Rating: 
Summary: It's a fabulous ride
Review: In one life-giving breath, author Isabel Allende sends her readers soaring on a sensuous, magical breeze through people and stories chronicling the generations of her family in her elequently crafted the Spirits. And it's a fabulous ride
Rating:
Summary: not what I was hoping for
Review: I brought this book home certain that I was going to fall in love with it. I didn't. I found the characters difficult to like. I found the events from one generation to the next to be repetitive. I was annoyed by the right-left politics of the book. At the end, I found myself liking Esteban better than Alba. I wish I bought something else.
Rating:
Summary: Learn about Chile
Review: I read this book entirely in Spanish, my second language, so I was kind of proud of myself, but also, I have to thank Sra. Allende for writing so clearly in her own native language, which she prefers to English.
I learned a lot, especially in the latter half of the book, about the election of Allende's relative (Salvador Allende) as the socialist president of the country (Chile) and his subsequent overthrow by the military. The book is realistic (almost non-fiction, like a roman a clef) in following those events.
Those events, which happened some thirty years ago, were brought into sharp focus, and it was a little scary. I have lived in Central America, Guatemala, where there is also a constant tension between the so-called guerillas and the military/industrial powers, and it's not like living in the U.S.
Allende's character, Alba, felt the brunt of it (she was arrested and tortured), and so did her grandfather, the venerable Senator Trueba, even with all his connections with the "right" side of the ledger (he was friends with the big-wig General Hurtado........Pinochet?).
This story proceeds through several generations, beginning with Trueba as a young man, striking off on his own and falling in love with a beautiful young lady from an "eligible" family (Rosa). Rosa dies unexpectedly, so Trueba marries her sister, Clara, the clairvoyant, and the story goes on from there.
Some readers may not like the intergenerational strategy as a plotting device, but if you want to learn about families in Chile, where there has always been a gap between the haves (from criollo or Spanish families) and the have-nots (Indian or indigenous peoples), this is a good format to increase learning and understanding, because it encompasses all the various nuances and twists. For example, none of Trueba's three children follow him in his temperament or in his politics, in fact, his twin sons are diametrically his opposite temperamentally and politically. I wanted to find out what happened to Nicolas, but Allende never gets back to him after he tries ballooning over the Andes.
And then you have the so-called mestizos, the children of both groups, and so you have basically a tripartite society, which is as Allende describes it, Alba being essentially the child of Pedro Tercero Garcia, an indigenous "rebel," and Alba's mother Blanca, a full-blooded Spanish-descent person.
In the U.S., the analogy may be with the slave-holders of the Southern states, and then the (usually) unacknowledged offspring of white and black (for example, W.E.B. Dubois) who later led Black civil rights movements against the "powers that be."
If you like short, sweet stories, this book is not for you. But you can learn a lot if you give the book a try.
Diximus.
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