Violeta by Isabel Allende

336 pages, Paperback

Published; January 25, 2022 by Bloomsbury Publishing

Historical fiction/library

This took me a while to finish. It was good, and at the same time it was dry.

Violeta is the narrator, but I never truly knew Violeta. She is just telling her story in a very not passionate way. There is sadness, revolutions, and more. But yes it is just her telling her story. I never felt that passion she spoke of. It was dry.

100 years of her life. Failed marriage. Kids. Lovers. Bad choices. South America changing before her eyes.

Eh, honestly I have not much more to say. I changed my mind, it was ok only.

Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family of five boisterous sons. From the start, her life will be marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth.

Through her father's prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses all and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. There, she will come of age, and her first suitor will come calling. . . .

She tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, times of both poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy. Her life will be shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women's rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and, ultimately, not one but two pandemics.

Told through the eyes of a woman whose unforgettable passion, determination, and sense of humor will carry her through a lifetime of upheaval, Isabel Allende once more brings us an epic that is both fiercely inspiring and deeply emotional.