Rating: 
Summary: Gorgeous, sweeping, and magical
Review: This is a story of the Trueba family and later, their involvement in the Chilean socialist 'revolution.' Allende is the neice of Salvador Allende, so the writing can be quite personal, one of the major strengths of this book.This book is compared to "One Hundred Years of Solitude," and with just cause. Marquez's and Allende's sentence structure is the same, lots of descriptive power packed into minimal space and breath: "His old cook had left because her husband had been accidentally shot, and her only son, who was doing his military service in a village in the South, had been hanged from a post with his guts wrapped around his neck, the people's revenge for his having carried out the orders of his superiors"(Allende, 395). There are also magical elements...Clara is made immune to fear due to Nana's constant attempts to scare her out of muteness; the females communes with spirits; there is a gene for green hair in the del Valle family, etc. Allende herself seems to refer to the similarites between her book and "Solitude". In that book, Marquez's characters all have similar names, making for a great deal of confusion. Allende alludes: "Her mother wanted to call her Clara, but her grandmother did not believe in repeating names, because it created confusion in her notebooks that bore witness to life"(262). Allende's characters are also similar to Marquez's; an uncle who tinkers with science and alchemy, revolutionary children, etc. But Allende's characters are more fully developed and change throughout the book. They are not trapped by their own quirky descriptions. This book is always well written, at times beautifully so. The only thing preventing me from giving it five stars is that sometimes my attention waned, and its politics could at times be heavy-handed. But it never took long for the story to grab hold of me again. A must-read.
Rating: 
Summary: A stunning book
Review: I immediately was drawn into the story and completely engrossed in this book. I couldn't put it down! It is moving, quirky and very poetic. I like Allende's style of writing about magical things in a matter-of-fact way. I would recommend not reading the jacket notes, I didn't until I was done with the book and I was glad, because I think they give too much away and this is a book that it's better to just let Allende guide you through with her wonderful style. This book is also a great way to learn more about Chilean history.
Rating:
Summary: POLITICAL, HISTORIC, ROMANTIC BLEND THAT READS EASILY
Review: The House of Spirits is probably Allende's most famous and important book. In it, she chronicles the life of a family, as the patriarch grows from a child to an elder, with the world changing all around him while he tries to keep it the same. Through the lenses of the Trueba family, we follow the portion of Chilean history that eventually leads to the 1973 coup. Of course, the author is niece of Salvador Allende, the socialist president democratically elected that was removed from power and killed by Pinochet. The book is based on clashes; old versus young, communists vs conservatives, landlords vs tenants. As the story unfolds, we view the extremist positions that each side takes: landlords attacking tenants, conservatives attacking communists, and vice versa. From the polarization of positions emerges a military dictatorship that no one wanted, but that was a product of the system setup by polarization. In the end, the distinctions that originally separated young from old, conservatives from communists, are removed, as both sides realize the futility of their disputes in the face on an authoritarian regime.
Rating: 
Summary: comme ci comme ca
Review: Even though I must that this novel at first captivated me and seemded quite interesting, the plot became redundant thus making the book too long. I think Allende would have done a better job had she shortended up her story.
Rating:
Summary: A classic.
Review: A masterful work by one of my favorite authors. It is magic. As you read the book you feel the events unraveling in front of your eyes. It is so live it brings the reader to the tortured South American nations.
Rating: 
Summary: Unimpressive
Review: I read this book for my OAC english Independent Study and was thoroughly unimpressed. I found it hard to get into the book, and even when I finally did, the story seemed like an extensive soap opera. Ms. Allende is a very gifted, detailed writer, but the plotline did not do much for me. Over all, it was agood book, but not what i would consider a classic, and definitly not something I would ever read again.
Rating:
Summary: epic family novel
Review: In reading the House of the Spirits, I had to appreciate how the past relates to the future in family matters. This book was magical and an wonderful read. A fathers reactions to his wife and daughter and how it influences their futures was really an amazing read. Typical of Allende and also other Spanish writers is the magical touches (ghosts, spirits,etc.) but such an escape!
Rating:
Summary: Following the flow of a family
Review: I had heard of this book in the mid-1980s but never read it until now. I saw it listed as required reading for a literature course that I was not able to take due to traveling schedules. And so, I read it anyway. I was pleasantly surprised. It is a definite inspiration for us all to write in our notebooks about our daily life. Who knows what memories we will leave for future generations? It's about a family and the events that happen over a few generations. I really hate to give much more detail so that the reader can use his own wonderful imagination. It is an EXCELLENT book. I want to rent the DVD now (if Meryl Streep is playing Clara, the matriarch, it must be worth seeing) for a new perspective. A few of the many lines that struck me:
-All was served and presented with the utmost simplicity...because any display of extravagance was a sign of vulgarity...according to..ancestry of that society descended from hard-working Basque and Spanish immigrants.
-Hatred took a long time to explode. It began with a concealed uneasiness and a desire to offend each other in small details.
-There is always a way to do what you want to do.
-The point was not to die, since death came anyway, but to survive, which would be a miracle.
-The saving idea of writing was to keep thoughts occupied and to escape...and live.
Rating:
Summary: A little tribute to my favorite book
Review: Allende's epic story about three generations of a family torn by death, anger, hate, betrayal, and mistrust is a masterpiece that comes nary so often. From the very first sentence, readers are transported to another world, one with myth and magic, pain and pleasure, conflict and conciliation. We are introduced to a foreign setting that becomes our own. It is a tribute both to Allende's brilliant and breathtaking writing and Bogin's outstanding translation that Chile becomes as real to us as the pages on the book. We are then thrust deep into an intricate, brilliant plot, and everything a character does, from the infinitesimal decisions to the bats of eyelashes, become our own. Everything about The House of the Spirits, from the suggestions of fate to the morally ambiguous characters, can be scrutinized as if everything's happening in not a world of fiction, but right before our eyes. After trials and tribulations, deaths and manhunts, fortunetellers and patriarchs, rapes and tortures, a national election and a CIA-sponsored coup, and much, much more, we arrive at the end, where a family ravaged by the circumstances of the world find that the cycle of love just might be able to overcome the harshest of realities. And it is at this end where we readers cry that this book mustn't stop. I never thought literature could be this good.
Rating:
Summary: definicion de la calidad de Isabel
Review: UNA OBRA MAESTRA
Un lector femenino se identificaria en las inquietudes, defectos y fuerza de caracter de Clara, su hija, su nieta y Ferula. El lector masculino se ubicaria en la tenacidad, poderio, terquedad, machismo y sentimientos buenos pero ocultos de Esteban. El lector se podria identificar con cualquiera de los personajes, ya que son tan distintos y con defectos y virtudes que traspasan su ambiente y se hacen participes en cualquier epoca.
Es una novela tenue, pero llena de acontecimientos interesantes. La descripcion y la narracion son excelentes.
Definitivamente esta obra es un viaje a la realidad del pasado, y una vision practica del presente. El lector se mueve de generacion a generacion cargando los sentimientos e inquietudes de los personajes. Refleja un ambiente bello y calido.
ES UNA NOVELA PARA TODO BUEN LECTOR< INDEPENDIENTEMENTE DEL GENERO> Pienso que leer esta novela es como un requisito, (a must) para las personas que dicen que disfrutan del pasatiempo de la lectura.
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