The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende - book review

 The House of the Spirits

By Isabel Allende 

Rating 5/5 

Genres : Magical Realism,  Drama, Romance, Politics, Fantasy 

In some 400 odd pages, the author covers the life history and important events of three generations of the Trueba and Del Valle families. The plot is just awesome and the prose style is magical and very mesmerizing. I just got sucked into the surreal and eccentric world of Clara Esteban who is a dreamy character conversing with spirits and with her head lost in the clouds and wild imagination. 

Esteban Trueba is a practical young man who falls head over heels in love with an angelic looking woman Rosa del valle. But before they could get married, Rosa dies in a tragic accident. This breaks Esteban's heart  and he devotes himself completely to the task of repairing his land and setting it up into a successful business center. To quench his sexual appetites, he occasionally turns into a monster ravaging the worker and peasant girls on his farm and when that resource is exhausted turns to local prostitutes. As time passes by, Clara the clairvoyant, sister of Rosa comes to womanhood and she makes a prediction for her future husband. She accurately suggests that she will be married to Esteban Trueba who wanted to be her sister's husband. Events turn this prediction into a reality and she becomes the most cherished and loved wife to Esteban Trueba who is otherwise a very querulous, staunch, stubborn and a loud bossy character. He worships the ground she walks and the more spiritual she is, the more he wants to possess her soul which could never be completely his. In the course of time,they have three children - Blanca the fair who has an ethereal romantic tale with one of the peasant boys on their land, twins Nicolas and Jaime who both fall in love with the same girl and neither of them get to have her. Each one of them has a certain streak of madness and eccentric qualities which - although angered Esteban and drove him to wit's end - I found endearing. In the course of time, Esteban enters politics, represents conservative party and becomes a very successful senator.  Clara passes away, Blanca gives birth to an illegitimate daughter Alba who with her grandfather Esteban writes this story later in life. The peaceful - though crazy - world the family has come to inhabit turns chaotic with turn of events in the political world .. communists win the elections, military overthrows the ruling government killing the president and establishing a dictatorship. Alba gets caught up in the turmoil and after much effort, the powerful Esteban gets her freed..and is it a happily ever after for them? Or has the family lost too much of its roots with the death of Clara and Esteban? 

The author is an amazingly talented woman. This cannot be her first novel and yet it is. She has written it like a pro. It brought back memories of reading some spectacular works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez on similar themes. I will definitely read more of her works..which are definitely one of a kind.