January 6, 2020
A Long Petal
of the Sea by Isabel Allende
(I would have finished reading this yesterday on my commute to work (the library is open on Sunday) while I was on the CTA Blue Line train. But there was a homeless man on the train who was sleeping across several seats, and when he stood up, he wasn't wearing any pants. Yep, bare-ass naked. There are cameras in the cars, and the CTA workers removed him from train at the next station. But it was still pretty unnerving and I had a hard time concentrating.)
In 1938,
with war looming in Europe, Spain is in the middle of its own civil war. Medical student Victor Dalmau and his family
live in Barcelona, and Victor and his brother Guillem join the battle for
independence, Victor as a medic and Guillem as a soldier. When Franco’s forces overrun Barcelona, Guillem’s pregnant sweetheart Roser flees over the mountains to France,
in the company of Victor's mother and one of Victor's friends.
At the instigation of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, Victor and Roser marry
and emigrate to Chile on board the Winnipeg, where they meet and become entangled with members of the aristocratic
del Solar family.
I have read just about everything that Isabel Allende has written, including her nonfiction. Her books are always extensively researched and gorgeously written, and A Long Petal of the Sea is no exception. The title of the book refers to Allende's native country of Chile. There are loads of details about the Spanish Civil War, and then the revolution and dictatorship in Chile, maybe a little too much. But there are hidden historical details such as the refugee ship Winnipeg, organized by the Chilean government and the poet Pablo Neruda to bring Spanish refugees to Chile after Franco set himself up as a dictator in Spain. The characters and the lives that Allende creates for them are wonderful. Be advised that there is some brutality since the characters were living in brutal times.
Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an e-ARC in return for a review.
