The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende

Read: April 2008

If there is a better storyteller than Isabel Allende anywhere in the world then I cannot wait to discover them. Like Gabriel Garcia Marquez she has the ability to juggle multiple characters and plots with consummate ease, plucking them from the air like brightly coloured birds to weave in and out of her rich tapestry. Like Rohinton Mistry she is able to condense great swathes of national history into the lives of a few characters who are simultaneously much greater, and far smaller than the country as a whole. And like Haruki Murakami, she uses magical realist twists to develop greater emotional intimacy with the characters and imbue the small everyday events of life with grand majesty. Her prose is engrossing, concise and readable. Her novels read like oral legends: they have that clarity of expression, that tried and tested rhythm of a story that has been enjoyed by generation after generation for hundreds of years.

The House of Spirits is, in short, exceptional. It tells the story of the “house on the corner,” the family residence of Esteban Trueba, under whose roof more than half a century of Chilean history is played out. Under that roof four generations of the Trueba family live their lives: weddings, marriages, fortunes made and lost, tragedies and success stories, intrigue, controversy, fallings out, violence, growth, acceptance, transformation. The plot is crammed with action, intrigue and revolution, all in less than 500 pages.

Often when a book is short on dialogue, with 50 page opening chapters of dense long paragraphs it can be difficult to get into. But not The House of Spirits. Within 5 pages I was engrossed in the lives of these fantastic characters: Esteban Trueba who goes off to make his fortune in the gold mines so that he can return and marry Rosa, a beautiful mermaid-like being who walks through life in a daydream; her introverted psychic sister Clara whose big dog Barrabas is her only friend; their eccentric uncle Marcos with a whole trunk full of interesting and exotic books, Esteban’s sister Ferula who sacrifices her life to care for their sick mother. Within this chapter there is an accidental death, marriage, cruel persecution, grand evening soirée’s and poverty stricken homelessness, grief and jubilation and a momentous first flight in an aeroplane. The House Of Spirits covers the whole spectrum of emotion and action. Its plot flows sweetly from one adventure to another, like a grand river tour through all the worlds most magnificent cities in history one after the other, on and on forever.

Every character is drawn with a loving, human touch, they are all capable of moments of pathetic petulance and the grandest gestures of generosity, and they constantly evolve and surprise us. To achieve this evolution over the course of their lives is a supreme achievement, I cannot laud Allende’s composition highly enough.

And despite tackling emotive, controversial issues, Allende retains complete control of her characters and plot. No political ideal is ever supported in favour of another, no character uniformly good or homogeneously evil. We feel as much for Esteban Trueba when the Socialist revolution confiscates his property and workers as we do for those self same workers when they lose their revolution in the military coup. Even while we mourn the passing of the old order, we celebrate the excitement and ideas of the socialists. And even the military junta has its benefits – clean streets, beautiful parks, easy money making – alongside its less savoury acts of persecution, torture and habitual murder. And the characters are the same: we are never left wholly despising the philandering Trueba who rapes his peasants and has a temper that threatens to destroy everything in his vicinity, just as even the mystical Clara or the willing sufferer Ferula have their human failings as well.

And I absolutely love the delicate narrative stance. It is such an achievement to be able to transform from third to first person seamlessly, without disrupting the flow, to have the impression that one character is the narrator throughout when it turns out at the end it is someone else altogether. There are so many clever aspects of this novel but their brilliantly accomplished realisation makes them invisible. At no time do they intrude upon a novel which is a great epic story, well written and thoroughly intriguing. I love it. You should read it now.


9 out of 10

The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

The Master and Margarita in one tweet-sized sentence: A damning satire of Stalinist society which contains the immortal statement of literary defiance: ‘Manuscripts don’t burn.” When the devil arrives in Moscow one winter day, he seems intent on some biblical style mischief. Together with his band of accomplices, including a violent, demonic tomcat, they take up residence in the apartment of a man and set about spreading destruction and death throughout the city. They get inside people’s heads, create chaos from the inside out, insidiously and completely. In this surrealist escapade, great swathes of Stalinist society are subjected to critical satire and tomfoolery. But this is not like Zoschenko’s little tale about a monkey that escapes from the zoo, spends the day roaming the streets of Stalinist society, and then decides to go back to the zoo. No, the devils brigade doesn’t see enough craziness around them and so they decide to go on a rampage of psychological destruction, causing havoc across the entire city. Theirs is a terrifying violence, calculated to drive people crazy. Only Margarita seems immune to their cunning, and so she sets about trying to solve the mystery of her lover’s disappearance. Suffused throughout with biblical references and a gloriously cinematic conclusion, The Master and Margarita is a novel packed with intelligence and intrigue and very very dark humour. It is a book to read and then re-read, and you will always find something new within its pages.

6.5 out of 10

Beside the Ocean of Time - George McKay Brown

7.5 out of 10

Beside the Ocean of Time is one of the most beguiling books you are likely to read. Like the thick, rolling ocean beside which it is set, this is a book which will sweep you up in its swell and carry you away to great battles and exciting adventures without you ever realising you have left the comfort of your armchair. You may not grasp how much you love it, but you are thoroughly, wonderfully, engrossed.

It is the early 20th Century and life has changed very little on the small Orkney island of Norday for hundreds of years. The same families do the same jobs they always have, as fishermen, and farmers, and craftsmen; the men drink in the one pub, the woman wish they wasted less money on alcohol, they all shop together at the only shop on the island.

But Thorfinn Ragnarson, a young boy growing up on the island, does not quite fit in. He is an idle daydreamer, so much so that the book opens with this immortal sentence, “Of all the lazy useless boys who ever went to Norday school, the laziest and most useless was Thorfinn Ragnarson.” He has no interest in taking over the family business, nor settling down to the simple life of the island. Instead, he spends his days recreating great battles and grand adventures from the island’s lore. Through his hungry eyes we travel through time to meet with invading forces landing on the shores, threatened islanders hiding in a narrow keep, soldiers fighting against the English king and country. And Thorfinn is in all of these, ever present in the story of the island.

But the present is a time of cataclysmic upheavals in the world, and not even the people of Norday can hope to escape its transformations. War is coming, and the tranquil island will never be the same again.

Beside the Ocean of Time is a beautiful, simple tale of island life and those who inhabit it. It is a rewarding and lyrical read, packed full of mythology and adventure, and a healthy dollop of magical realist seal people to boot! Books this simple leave me thoroughly in awe, you can hear the wind howling through the thin walls and the rain pelting the land; you can feel the sea whip wildly against the shore, and the history hang amid the mist hovering over the island. It is not bleak – no, far from it! – Beside the Ocean of Time is rich and powerful and enthralling. Just buy it, I cannot imagine anyone not being won over to its simple, dreamy, story.