Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3715 in Books
• Published on: 1994-02-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 490 pages

Synopsis
Spanning four generations, Isabel Allende's family saga is populated by a memorable, often eccentric, cast of characters. Together, men and women, spirits, the forces of nature and of history, converge in a brlliantly realised novel.

From the Back Cover
Spanning four generations, Isabel Allende's magnificent family saga is populated by a memorable, often eccentric cast of characters. Together, men and women, spirits, the forces of nature, and of history, converge in an unforgettable, wholly absorbing and brilliantly realised novel that is as richly entertaining as it is a masterpiece of modern literature.

About the Author
Isabel Allende was born in Lima, Peru. She has recently lived in Caracas, Venezuela, with her husband and two children. Her first two novels, The House of the Spirits and Of Love and Shadows are published by Black Swan. The House of the Spirits was made into a film starring Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Jeremy Irons, Winona Ryder, Vanessa Redgrave, Antonio Banderas and Keanu Reeves.

Customer Reviews

Clara, Clearest Clairvoyant!! Magical visitations in Isabel Allende's House!
I can still remember reading Allende's opening lines in Liverpool's Bold Street Waterstones. 'Barrabas came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy.' I tingled all over, bought the book and barely managed to get off the train at Bolton Station. Literary purists always gesture knowingly towards their copies of Marquez's One Hundred years of Solitude. Leave them to it. Allende was born to write this book. She centres her story on a family's experience of Pinochet's savage regime in Chile. The House of the Spirits is as the title suggests, a family saga but a saga marvellously suffused by 'other' ways of knowing about events and futures. Part of the magic of the novel is that the 'spirit' co-exists powerfully with the 'material' in an unapologetic and finally redemptive way. The epigraph by the poet Pablo Neruda says it all for me:

How much does a man live, after all?

Does he live a thousand days, or one only?

...What does it mean to say 'for ever'?

Fantastic
I absolutely loved this book! It was colourful and political, about love and family, sadness and tragedy, all wrapped into one heart-warming story. For me it was one of those books that once I started, I didn't want to do anything else but see what happened next.

Allende has become my favourite author as a result of this book. I would advise anyone to read it.

My first favourite book!
We can all remember that book that showed us how reading can be genuinely enjoyable. For me, The House of the Spirits was that book. I was to read this book in 11th grade when we were given 2 months to finish it. Back then I had better ways to distract myself from homework by the time I realised it was 2 days before the deadline I had only read about 4 chapters. Of those two days, I forced myself to read as much of it as I could, and the first night I ended up reading just over 100 pages, leaving the remaining 250 pages for the following day. Needless to say, it was not a struggle and I actually enjoyed reading the whole thing, even though it took most part of day and night.

Isabelle Allende is Chilean, and very proudly molds her stories around her knowledge of her country and her ancestry. She has extremely powerful ways of describing expressions and feelings in detail, and will write in words what some of us wouldn't be able to describe. Love is one of those, and this book is full of it. Love for the country, love for the family, love for that one special person, and the power it has over you, giving you the strength to accomplish anything.

Like all memorable novels, The House of the Spirits is a mixture of melancholy, joy, sadness, laughter; an array of powerful feelings that grasp the reader's heart. Tragedy has a continuous presence in this story as it evolves around Chile's civil war and the way the characters lived, or died, through it. Some of the characters used were based on real relatives, adding a biographical touch to the story, enhancing the power of the novel.

A must read, and if you like Isabel Allende, I strongly recommend PAULA, Isabel's autobiography, but be prepared for a very powerful and captivating book.