In Eva Luna, Isabel Allende makes you wonder, as others would about the main character in this book, where she found so many tales to unravel within the context of one story. Her character development is exhaustive and overwhelming at times. She doesn’t only tell you who a person is, but also who their parents and grandparents were, where and how they lived, what food they liked to eat and how big their hips were. She digresses. She makes you completely forget who you started reading about and then, without warning, she brings you back. She tells you about the relationships and childhood episodes that made this character who he or she is. She gives you buckets of unnecessary details you’ll love. She fascinates you and even loses you and then somehow she recaptures you. You start wondering if these characters actually lived and if this “history” she references in the book was more than a figment of her late 80′s imagination. Long overdue for me to read, Eva Luna (English title: The Stories of Eva Luna) is a classic of recent Latin American literature. At 285 pages, this is a much smaller book than Retrato en Sepia or others of Allende’s. Yet the mazes she weaves in the stories make it feel like Eva Luna will never end. You may wonder where Allende comes up with all her ‘cuentos’, but you won’t wonder why she keeps selling books.
Next, maybe La Casa de los Espìritus and Afrodita for more of her early writing.
