isabel allende a long petal of the sea summary

Felipe supports the Pinochet coup, but is then disgusted by the dictatorship’s excesses. Ofelia finally runs up against the realities of women’s position and her beauty and carefree vanity are crushed. She is subtler in two ways: her characters are rarely one-dimensional and they change over the decades.īoth the capricious Ofelia and her brother Felipe del Solar are brought up in conservative, traditionalist values. However, she is not Manichean in her comparison of Chilean conservatives and Catalan republicans. Allende introduces the del Solar family who will act throughout the novel as a right-wing foil to Roser and Víctor.

The first part also contains some stodgy, clichéd writing, surprising in someone so skilled, such as “the cheerful, valiant Basque who had witnessed so much death and suffering…” (p.59).Īs her story moves to Chile, it becomes much surer-footed. In this sort of sentence, she fails to tell her story through her characters and/or leave her readers to find out the background facts for ourselves. “The conservatives and Catholic Church, who had invested money, propaganda and apocalypse sermons… were defeated… by the Popular Front, a coalition of left-wing parties.” (p.15) Allende has done her research into the Spanish Civil War, but it is heavily worn. The first part suffers from too much background exposition. Over the years this arrangement turns into a great love story. After Guillem is killed in the War, Víctor and Roser make a marriage of convenience to get onto the Winnipeg. Víctor is a doctor and the brother of Guillem, the father of her child.

She started life as a barefoot, illiterate goatherd and ended up an accomplished pianist. Roser is the kind of strong and intelligent woman familiar to readers of Allende novels: idealised perhaps, but attractive. The novel runs from 1936 to 1989 and ranges from Teruel and Catalonia during the Civil War to a French prison camp, exile in Chile and refuge in Venezuela.

Isabel allende a long petal of the sea summary