I Didn't Like This One

This post has taken me forever to write. I haven’t felt inspired because…(drum roll)…I didn’t like this book, which is a first for the blog. I’m not sure exactly how I want to go about writing this because it feels like bad energy to write a laundry list of things I didn’t like about a book someone worked hard on and then put that negativity out into the universe for other people to read. BUT, though it seems increasingly impossible, I know there is a way to have an intelligent and balanced dialogue about the things (art and otherwise) that we do not like, or do not agree on. That is what I am going to attempt to do tonight, so here we go.

The book in question is Violeta by Isabel Allende. It is the most recent novel in her prolific career and the first book I’ve ever read by her. I want to really emphasize that I have not read any other novels by her, so when I speak about her writing in a general way, my singular data point is this book. I can only assume (or hope) that, as a recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, Allende has written better books than this one.

For a little background, Allende was born in Peru in 1942, and has led a very interesting life since then. Both her father and her step-father were diplomats, so she lived in many different places growing up, including Bolivia, Beirut and Chile, where she would live for many years. During that time her father’s first cousin, Salvador Allende, of the socialist party, was president of Chile. In 1973 Augusto Pinochet led a military coup, and became dictator of Chile. Allende (Isabel) was placed on government wanted lists for her association with the socialist party and was forced into exile in Venezuela, where her writing career began.

I didn’t know any of this before I started reading, but it provides some interesting context. First of all, it took me a while to figure out that we were in Chile. This is in large part due to the fact that she never mentions the country by name, which considering how much of the book is tied to the political history of the country, is odd. Second of all, the fact that Allende was related to…Allende (which I realize is fairly obvious, but I didn’t put it together) paints the content of the novel in a different, potentially clearer, light. I don’t think it would have changed my reading of the novel, but Allende’s seemingly rabid need to make this novel political makes a little bit more sense. Anyway, I’ll save that for later and start with some of the things I liked about this book.

I like the idea! Obviously…I did buy the book after all. The premise of this novel is that it is actually written for and addressed to one specific person. The titular character, Violeta, recounts the story of her life from her birth in 1920 to her death in 2020. Yes, you guessed it - born in a global pandemic, died in a global pandemic. More on that later. Violeta shares her life story, her fortunes and failures, passionate affairs and heartbreak, love and loss, joy and pain, etc. Or at least she’s supposed to. The blurb on the jacket claimed that “Through the eyes of a woman whose unforgettable passion, determination, and sense of humor carry her through a lifetime of upheaval, Isabel Allende once more brings us an epic that is both fiercely inspiring and deeply emotional.”

It sounded really good - I love historical fiction, and I love a sweeping generational tale. It was supposed to be deeply emotional! If you know me (or have read my “about” section) you know I’m a sucker for a tearjerker. I was also excited to read about a place and time period of which my knowledge is limited to snippets from Spanish classes I took in high school. Historical fiction that makes me cry and teaches me something? I was ready. Sadly, only the last of those enticing elements ended up coming to fruition, and even then only partially, because Allende glosses over so much of the truly interesting stuff. Okay, I know, I’m already veering into the negative, but it’s so hard. I was really disappointed. Anyway, I will give the book points for reminding me to broaden my horizons - I am looking forward to reading some other, better books about South America.

I want to quickly also mention that there were a couple of moments that had a genuine emotional effect on me. Not many (literally a couple (2)), but I feel like perhaps these were glimpses of what Allende is capable of? Why people love her so much and give her awards? I don’t want to give too much away, but the first of these moments was the death of one of the characters in childbirth - doubly emotional because this character had turned her life around after significant hardship. The second was the discovery of the death of a really good, really innocent character who was disappeared during Pinochet’s dictatorship. Not that it would matter if he weren’t really good. Roughly 3,000 people were killed during Pinochet’s reign, and roughly 30,000 were tortured. It’s not exactly difficult to make maternal death and the politically motivated murder of innocents emotional. And if I’m totally honest, these moments were really just shallow wells in the desert of this emotionless, almost callous novel, but a shallow well in the desert is better than no well at all, so I’ll give it to her.

Now, for the decidedly less positive: As I mentioned, the novel is written in the form of a long letter. It is a testimony of Violeta’s life addressed to one specific person who she claims to love more than anyone else in the world, Camilo. It’s unclear for first half of the novel who Camilo is, and it’s really not that important in the end, but I’ll leave it a surprise in case any of you want to read this book. In her preface, Violeta writes that the following pages are intended to replace a lengthy correspondence with Camilo, described by the woman herself as “overly sentimental and often cruel” (Allende 3). She definitely got rid of the sentimentality - cruelty not so much. After that set up, we dive right in, starting with the day of Violeta’s birth in 1920. The first chapter and a half reads like a Covid propaganda piece, which felt both performative and condescending. It’s like Allende ran through a list of buzzwords (masks, stay-at-home order, quarantine, unemployment, protests, etc.) and made sure to work each one in so that everyone would know that she’s a good member of the mob. Whatever.

I powered through all that because I had such high hopes for Violeta’s story, but this treatment of the Spanish Flu was just the preview of a pattern that continued through to the end of the novel. Allende’s choice to write in the epistolary style allowed her to breeze through and gloss over an absurd amount (a century’s worth) of monumental historical, social and political issues and events without saying anything interesting or valuable about a single one. It makes the novel essentially unenjoyable. You’ll be chugging along, feeling like you might finally learn something interesting about Violeta when you get pulled out of the story by Allende’s shallow political interjections.

Topics like the women’s rights movement (including gaining the vote, working rights, domestic abuse, etc.), gay rights, abortion, racism, sex abuse in the Catholic Church, and more are all given the exact same superficial treatment. Gotta make sure they’re included, but don’t say anything that might land you in hot water. It’s egregious tokenism, but it’s made even worse by the fact that Allende doesn’t even try to lead into these topics organically. For example, at one point, in order to include a little (one paragraph) commentary on access to birth control, Allende gets us there by literally writing, “Let me go off on a tangent, Camilo, to give you a brief history of birth control” (Allende 109). I simply expect more from a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom! I’ve read epistolary novels that I really loved, but it feels like a total cop out in this case. What could have been a really in depth exploration of one woman’s impressive 100 year life, turned out to actually be a vehicle for Allende to show off her wokeness.

The other effect of Allende’s choice to write in this form, and to include so much useless commentary on such a wide array of topics, is that the reader actually loses out on both sides. The historical, political, social bits are surface level, but because of the fact that Allende feels the need to include so many of those bits, the reader’s understanding of Violeta’s internal emotional life is surface level as well. Although Violeta talks about affairs of the heart, triumphs and failures, joys and tragedies, it is all so detached. We don’t get real introspection, and more importantly, we don’t get lessons learned. If the detachment is intentional - meant to show how the trauma of Violeta’s life has turned her into an emotionally barren and callous old woman, I suppose it is successful. Unfortunately the effect of it is that Violeta becomes an extremely unlikable, unsympathetic character. The two moments I mentioned above are the only two moments in the novel where she displays any real emotion. I would have preferred a novel that focused on Violeta’s own little world, and ironically, I think if Allende had taken that approach, she would have been able to include her social and political commentary much more effectively - filtered through the eyes and mind of a character the reader actually knows and likes.

To sum it up, I expected this book to be deep, and sweeping and powerful. It was shallow, sweeping in a bad way and watered down - nothing that it promised to be. And with that, I’m tapping out. Writing about books that I didn’t like is not nearly as much fun as writing about the ones that I did. I can’t imagine that many of you, dear readers, will be inspired to read Violeta after this ringing endorsement, but if any of you have already dragged yourself through this one, I’d love to hear what you thought. More importantly, if any of you are Isabel Allende fans, please recommend one of her novels that is actually good - I feel like there MUST be at least one.