Violeta: 'Storytelling at its best' – Woman & Home

Ein episches und wunderschön geschriebenes Buch, das mich packt, aber ich wünsche mir ein paar mehr Tiefe in der Entwicklung der Charaktere.

Isabel Allende ist eine großartige Schriftstellerin und dieser Roman zeigt wieder einmal ihr Können. Die Geschichte wird in Briefform erzählt und schildert das Leben von Violeta und ihrer Familie.

Violeta Del Valle is born during the Spanish flu pandemic in 1920, and dies one hundred years later during the current pandemic. The story cleverly interweaves her 100-year lifespan with the changes and upheavals of her home country (unnamed, but clearly Chile).Like Isabel Allende’s last book, “A Long Petal of the Sea”, there’s a zoom-in, zoom-out perspective on personal and collective events and history, although in contrast to the previous book, “Violeta” is related in the first person in the form of a letter to a much-loved younger relative.The story kept me gripped, and like listening to an epic symphony, some passages and phases involved me more than others. I felt the writing missed the magic and wonder of Allende’s earlier novels, though. Some parts seemed too much of an info-dump, squeezing in historical events to fit the story. There’s a huge cast of characters, but many seem entirely superfluous or 2-D caricatures.“Violeta” is not my favourite Isabel Allende novel, but she is always worth reading, and there are still passages in this novel that are sublime.