The House of Spirits

Rating:
Summary: In one word...Magical
Review: "The House of the Spirits" by Isabel Allende is a magically stunning book that deals with everything from love, to hate, to jealousy, and conveying every single human emotion all in one book. This was the second book of Allende's that I've read. Allende interweaves magic, fiction, and reality brilliantly.
The story is about Rosa the Beautiful, her sisters, mother, and her lover, Esteban Trueba. I won't so anything else so I won't spoil, but you NEED to read this book if you're a lover of fiction. It's a great introduction to Allende, and just a plain great read.

Rating:
Summary: Read this book!
Review: My mother gave me this book when I left the United States to study in Chile during college, but I never got around to reading it until now. I wish I hadn't waited so long! Although this entire epic novel was a pleasure to read, the second half was even better than the first half. Estaban Trueba's character was difficult to relate to at first (his raping and pillaging of the peasants made him highly unsympathetic). He was so awful that he came off as unrealistic and one dimensional, but this changed over the course of the book. In the end, Allende somehow takes all the disconnected parts of this story, both painful and joyful, and ties them together in such a profound and accurate manner that I found myself actually crying. Not many books do that to me.

I would recommend this book to anybody as great story, but I would also suggest studying a bit of Chilean history beforehand to fully understand all the political references ("A Nation of Enemies" is a great non-fiction book about Chile's recent past).

Rating:
Summary: Compelling and Entertaining
Review: Allende's first book is a wonderful journey through the trials and tribuations of the Trueba family as they struggle through the changing nature of Chilean politics. The story is told from two perspectives -- that of the third person narrator, and that of Esteban Trueba, the hot-headed Conservative patriarch.

This book is consistently compared to Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude," and the comparison is warranted in many respects. Both authors trace the history of a family as they are tossed along the rough waters of Latin American politics, and both authors employ magical realism to varying degrees. Personally, I find Garcia Marquez to be a bit more subtle and intriguing, while Allende writes with such precision that there is little room for different interpretations. Because of this, Allende's book is a far easier read than "One Hundred..." and it is easy to pick it up again after being away for a few days. (There are none of the confusing name repetitions as in Garcia Marquez's book, so you can easily pick up right where you left off and not fear you're forgetting something.)

This is also a fast-paced book, laden with characters you can identify with on some level. I read "House of the Spirits" right after finishing "One Hundred..." and in retrospect wish I had read them in the opposite order. Allende's book is a good introdution to Latin American literature and magical realism, and I think my reading of Garcia Marquez would have been enhanced by such an introduction.

Rating:
Summary: Wow, what a book!
Review: I have a special connection to "The House of Spirits," as my wife his Chilean, and her father was a supporter of Salvador Allende (the Candidate). "The House of the Spirits" is an excellent look into the history and mindset of Chile and why President Allende's rise and fall was so volatile.

"House of the Spirits" follows one family through four generations, telling the story of Esteban Trueba, and through him, the history of Chile. Isabel Allende (niece of Salvador)tells a rich story, similar in style to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. While some parts were hard to follow and I sometimes wondered what Allende's point was, the book really delivers a solid ending that explains the necessity of all that came before.

"House of Spirits" is a well-written book and I can see why Isabel Allende is one of my wife's favorite authors. I highly recommend reading this to anyone interested in the history of Chile, or anyone who enjoys the "magic realism" of South American authors such as Allende and Marquez.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful work
Review: This book is wonderful. I'm chilean by birth, livd in the u s for 14 years, but i have a i guess an american opinion on the book and a chilean. It is good. The story is well told, and tells the interesting Trueba family. Very animated. It is a story very interestingly told from a point of view of someone who had lived in Chile during the time of the military coup in 1973. That, for me is very valuable. For me, it is the most important or most interesting anecdote of this book, is that it was written in a space of time which refelected that era, and for chile it determined its future. The military coup in chile had mixed opinions, but that comment is for another book. The good thing about 'House of the spirits' is that it is told by one of the best latin american authors that write books today, and it is a book worth reading for any person of any taste.

Thanks.

Rating:
Summary: Complex
Review: This is a great book. Definitely for those who are into emotional stories. You get tears at the romances that could never be. However, has anybody noticed that Alba, Blanca's child, spent her childhood reading at the age of five, and could read her Uncle Marco's book? Then she grows up and becomes close to her grandmother. Her grandmother(Clara) tells Alba the stories that Clara had learned from Uncle Marco's book. Pretty ironic isn't it? Only read the book one time and it hit me. For those new readers, see if you can spot it.

Rating:
Summary: A parade of strong, passionate, beautiful women
Review: How many can you take?! And they all do the same thing. An in depth look at one of them would be enough. I don't care which, they were all essentially the same character. The repetitive cyclical nature of this plot got so tedious. I didn't care enough about any of the characters and the political struggle was dull and depressing. The use of the supernatural was interesting, though, and the novel is certainly ambitious although i would say its reach exceeds its grasp. This book is a long and exhausting load of ideas that should have been shortened and refined.

Rating:
Summary: Entrancing
Review: Entrancing novel of the supernatural. Follows the women of a family blessed with special gifts, be they in the form of super natural powers or powerful personalities. A story of feminine strength, dreams and romance. A little dragging at the end, but a nearly perfect novel.

Rating:
Summary: An exhausting book
Review: Even though "The House of the Spirits" was an easy read, it was quite exhausting to read because of the many emotions that I felt while reading it. Allende is a great writer who uses words to make the reader feel as the characters in the book feel. Their pain becomes your pain and their joy becomes your joy. She mixed magical realism with her political ideals into a poignant story about a family. Not many authors can do that.

Rating:
Summary: emersing!
Review: Loved the character development. I almost felt like I knew Clara and while it took a great strain on my imagination, I also manage to conjure up Rosa in my mind. I loved that the characters all seemed to have a distinct difference about them and were not bunched up into the same monotonous "dark, sensual and strikingly beautiful" depictions of so many novels today.
For example, Clara's missing front teeth, or Amanda's overdone make up. It really gave life and realism to the characters.

Bravo.