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By Gabriela Garcia

• Published Jan. 31, 2022 Updated Feb. 2, 2022

VIOLETA By Isabel Allende Translated by Frances Riddle

“In this country there are always calamities, and it’s not hard to connect them to some life event,” the 100-year-old Violeta writes to a shadowy figure in Isabel Allende’s new novel. Violeta could as easily be describing the epistolary epic that frames her own life, which is also rife with calamity: the dissolution of a family fortune, a tempestuous marriage interspersed with love affairs, the machinations of family and friends over a century, all set against political upheaval in her homeland, an unnamed Latin American country.

Bookended by pandemics — the Spanish flu and the Covid crisis — “Violeta” chronicles a feminist awakening amid twin repressive forces, the state and the domestic sphere, in passages whose sheer breadth is punctuated by sometimes stilted, explanatory dialogue. When Violeta drops a subtle callback to “The House of the Spirits,” revealing that she is related to its protagonist, one might crave the inventive details that made Allende’s debut novel an icon of post-Boom Latin American literature: “Grandmother Nívea … had been decapitated in a terrifying automobile accident and her head was lost in a field; there was an aunt who communed with spirits and a family dog that grew and grew until it was the size of a camel.” This novel forgoes such chimeras in favor of headline realism in a stylistically straightforward translation; there are no more camel-dogs, only Violeta’s compellingly unsentimental gaze as she recounts the brutality of a fascist coup, her angst over the disappearance of her son, a political exile, and her fraught relationship with his father — who, she later discovers, may have had a hand in both (later she discovers he operated “death flights” of political prisoners to torture centers).

This middle section, the novel’s strongest, chronicles the events leading to dictatorship in a country much like Chile, with a dictator much like Pinochet, in unflinching, breezy prose that narrows its focus to the class and gender tensions playing out in daily life. Violeta offers humorous reprieves and no-nonsense ruminations — she doesn’t like children (“the only good thing about kids is that they grow fast”), resents men whose “success can be attributed” to her (“while he researched, experimented, wrote … I took care of the domestic expenses and saved”), finds marriage stifling (“as uneventful as life in a nunnery”) and deplores the double standards that brand her “the adulteress, the concubine, the wayward lover.”

When Violeta finally considers her own passive collusion with the regime, having amassed wealth and led a comfortable life while a country bled around her, I wished for some of the same perspicacity. “You live in a bubble, mom,” Violeta’s rebellious son says to her at one point, and a hundred years of reflection does not fully pierce it; Violeta’s political growth does not extend to thorny racial and economic considerations. Violeta’s naïve, sometimes colonialist lens results in a reckless romanticism: “The mix of races is very attractive,” she writes earnestly about one mestiza acquaintance. She praises her grandson’s missionary work in Congo “in a community that was no more than a trash heap before you got there,” and while admitting her ignorance (“I didn’t know anything about Africa … I was incapable of distinguishing one country from another”) fails to recognize the saviorism and essentialism behind her praise. Violeta’s reckoning leads to the development of a foundation to support survivors of domestic violence — but a conclusion that “if you truly want to help others, you’re going to need money” is circular logic that feels like a watery offering on a blood-soaked altar, a quiet tiptoe off the page after a careful rendering of the political graveyards that haunt Latin America’s psyche.

Gabriela Garcia is the author of the award-winning novel “Of Women and Salt.”

VIOLETA By Isabel Allende Translated by Frances Riddle 322 pp. Ballantine Books. $28.

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by Isabel Allende ; translated by Frances Riddle ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 25, 2022

A slog even Allende fans may have trouble getting through.

In a rueful account written for her grandson, a 100-year-old South American woman recalls her tumultuous life.

Born during the Spanish flu pandemic, Violeta Del Valle spends her early years quarantined with her well-off family in the capital of an unnamed country (one that resembles Allende's native Chile). With her mother ill, she is largely raised by her warm-spirited, independent-minded Irish governess. The family fortunes gutted by the Great Depression, her father kills himself (Violeta discovers his body). While living in relative isolation in the country, she meets and marries a German veterinarian whose life is mostly about finding a way to preserve the semen of pure-bred bulls. Tired of playing the submissive wife, Violeta, in a heated scene that could be a parody of romance novels, is swept off her feet by a dashing but soon abusive Royal Air Force ace of Latin American origins who runs guns for the Mafia and performs missions for the CIA. "Held together by a perpetual cycle of hate and lust," even when he takes up with another woman, the couple—though Violeta remains legally married to the vet throughout—has a son whose sensitive nature doesn't sit well with his macho father and a daughter who will become a drug addict. While there's no lack of incidence in this chronological epic, which is punctuated by glancing references to historical events including the rise of military takeovers, Allende's reductive style deprives the book of narrative power. For all she goes through, Violeta is thinly drawn—her great business success as a home builder seems tossed in like an afterthought. And the "floods, drought, poverty, and eternal discontent" she refers to are kept offstage.

Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-593-49620-6

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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by Isabel Allende ; translated by Frances Riddle

by Isabel Allende

by Isabel Allende ; translated by Nick Caistor & Amanda Hopkinson

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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LONG ISLAND

by Colm Tóibín ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 7, 2024

A moving portrait of rueful middle age and the failure to connect.

An acclaimed novelist revisits the central characters of his best-known work.

At the end of Brooklyn (2009), Eilis Lacey departed Ireland for the second and final time—headed back to New York and the Italian American husband she had secretly married after first traveling there for work. In her hometown of Enniscorthy, she left behind Jim Farrell, a young man she’d fallen in love with during her visit, and the inevitable gossip about her conduct. Tóibín’s 11th novel introduces readers to Eilis 20 years later, in 1976, still married to Tony Fiorello and living in the titular suburbia with their two teenage children. But Eilis’ seemingly placid existence is disturbed when a stranger confronts her, accusing Tony of having an affair with his wife—now pregnant—and threatening to leave the baby on their doorstep. “She’d known men like this in Ireland,” Tóibín writes. “Should one of them discover that their wife had been unfaithful and was pregnant as a result, they would not have the baby in the house.” This shock sends Eilis back to Enniscorthy for a visit—or perhaps a longer stay. (Eilis’ motives are as inscrutable as ever, even to herself.) She finds the never-married Jim managing his late father’s pub; unbeknownst to Eilis (and the town), he’s become involved with her widowed friend Nancy, who struggles to maintain the family chip shop. Eilis herself appears different to her old friends: “Something had happened to her in America,” Nancy concludes. Although the novel begins with a soap-operatic confrontation—and ends with a dramatic denouement, as Eilis’ fate is determined in a plot twist worthy of Edith Wharton—the author is a master of quiet, restrained prose, calmly observing the mores and mindsets of provincial Ireland, not much changed from the 1950s.

Pub Date: May 7, 2024

ISBN: 9781476785110

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION

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‘Violeta’ Review: An Average Novel from an Above Average Author

With 25 best-selling novels and a Presidential Medal of Freedom, it is no secret that Isabel Allende is a literary tour de force. Her latest work, “Violeta,” gives her fans many of the hallmarks they have come to expect from the author: heart-wrenching but honest depictions of the Pinochet regime and complex, interwoven, endlessly interesting family dynamics. But that’s just the problem. Allende’s prolific abilities become repetitive in “Violeta,” ultimately producing a book that loses itself in monotonous historical scenes and rotating characters, and which fails to stand out in any specific way.

“Violeta” is a bildungsroman that follows the life of its eponymous character from birth until near-death, a period of 100 years. Violeta lives a thoroughly whirlwind life. She marries three different men, experiences the rise and fall of Chilean President Salvador Allende (Isabel Allende’s own godfather), the subsequent military Junta and its aftermath, and raises two children to adulthood. She also starts a housing materials empire, and lives a life of adventure and intrigue until she predicts she will die in 2020.

The challenge with a story that tracks one character through so many years is that the plot is necessarily as meandering as a life. There is no climax nor much rhythmic flow to the story, merely milestones in a long series of episodes. On top of that, the story is written as an account that Violeta is telling Camilo, her grandson and adopted son. The compounded plot-as-life and the feedback loop created by the main-character-as-narrator structure gives the story a didactic mood. Violeta appears to edit herself, inserting pithy aphorisms and bits of advice rather than lush description. This style, heavy with “telling” and light on the “showing” becomes exhausting as the reader endures literally one hundred years of Violeta’s thoughts.

A lot of buzz surrounding this book was due to the fact that it is one of the first books written during the coronavirus pandemic to include it as a historical event. This advance is somewhat misleading, as Covid-19 only appears at the very end of the story as a neat bookend for Violeta’s childhood in the aftermath of the Spanish Flu outbreak of the early 1920s. Over the course of her lifetime, Violeta lives through many important political and historical events, including pandemics, wars, and natural disasters. Ultimately, however, the mix of historical evidence and personal anecdotes are crudely blended, causing the narrative to fundamentally lack cohesion.

In the acknowledgements section of “Violeta,” Allende references Wikipedia as an invaluable source. The issue is that “Violeta” reads, at times, like an embellished Wikipedia page, taking well-known scenes of Chilean history and inserting random personal details that could plausibly be attributed to one of the many characters in this novel. For example, Violeta hears about a neighbor being abused by her husband and creates an entire foundation to support survivors of abuse that becomes nationally recognized. The reader never knows why Violeta is so moved by this neighbor’s story, nor how she created an entire foundation, nor does her apparent life’s work take more than a sidebar role in the overall narrative. The episode appears to exist only so that Allende can conveniently comment on bureaucratic corruption in Chile post-Pinochet. Or when Violeta’s daughter, Nieves, becomes embroiled with drugs and sex trafficking in Las Vegas, it feels more like a crude attempt to situate the timeline in the 1970s than meaningful plot development.

It is hard to categorize “Violeta” because, like much of Allende’s work, the scope is staggering. To address an entire life in 319 pages is a significant undertaking. Violeta herself also eludes definition. From a petulant child to a wise grandmother, the reader watches her develop as the decades pass. Allende doesn’t shy away from life’s more difficult moments, like when Violeta experiences multiple familial tragedies, and is liberal in her depiction of more private moments. Violeta is a sexual woman well into her old age, which is refreshing and empowering, but Allende’s liberalism can be contradictory and problematic. When Violeta speaks of her sexuality, it is mostly to explain her connection to the current man of her life; she only feels beautiful if a man desires her. The story’s token queer couple, Josephine Taylor and Teresa Rivas, seem to exist to merely appeal to audiences in 2022 rather than as a worthwhile story in their own right. Make no mistake, fiction written in 2022 does not need to be “liberal” or to have certain representation or morals or anything of the sort to be valuable. But at times, “Violeta” seems too preoccupied with appealing to a certain audience than telling a cohesive story.

Overall, “Violeta” is an impressive undertaking that combines a century of history into a relatively slim novel. However, a lack of narrative flow and its rote similarity to Allende’s other, more complicated works makes this book a step below the masterful literary fiction that made her famous.

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Review: Violeta by Isabel Allende

Man, I’ve wanted to read Isabel Allende in forever! I finally made time to read her upcoming release, Violeta . Thanks NetGalley and Ballantine Books for letting me read this one in advance.

Want to see more 2022 historical fiction? Check out 2022 Historical Fiction: Huge List of New Releases .

Violeta Summary

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.

Wow, there was a lot to this book. It’s the story of an entire lifetime, so there’s definitely a lot to get through!

I loved the beginning of Violeta . Her life as a child was so incredibly interesting, and I found myself feeling sad when the story continued and she was older. I loved the story of the woman who comes to her home as a nanny…their relationship is fascinating, and continues to be that way throughout the book.

While I was really engaged for about the first half of this book, the second half didn’t shine as brightly for me. It’s certainly an incredible story, and there’s no doubt that Isabel Allende is an experienced, immersive storyteller. I’ve heard good things about other books of hers (specifically A Long Petal of the Sea ), and I would like to pick up one of those.

Violeta , though, gets a little bit too mired in politics for me. I enjoyed reading about the politics of a region I don’t know as much about, but the story got too focused there for me, with longer descriptions about what was going on with the politics in multiple countries. I like a side of politics with my stories…this verged too far into the political content for me.

That said, the fact that Allende fit this whole beautiful life into one book is pretty amazing, and just further shows what kind of an experienced storyteller she is. That part worked for me, as there weren’t any gaps that were too big or storylines/relationships that get lost. Super impressed with the whole layout of the story.

So, while I was really into the story at times, I got a bit bored at other times. Overall it’s a good read, and I’d like to pick up another of Allende’s books very soon. 3.5 stars from me for Violeta .

I'm currently a full-time writer/content strategist with an English degree living in Minneapolis, MN. I created Literary Quicksand to feed my love of books, writing, and community. More About Me

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Review: Allende’s ‘Violeta,’ an epic South American tale

This cover image released by Ballantine shows “Violeta” by Isabel Allende. (Ballantine via AP)

• Copy Link copied

“Violeta,” by Isabel Allende. (Random House)

Chilean writer Isabel Allende’s latest novel is “Violeta,” an epic tale that transports readers across a century of South American history, through economic collapse, dictatorship and natural disasters like an earthquake and a hurricane.

From the aftermath of World War I to the present day, narrator Violeta del Valle recounts the story of her life in an unnamed South American country with a book-long letter to her grandson Camilo.

Violeta tells of living through the Spanish flu pandemic as the youngest child and only daughter in a family of five sons. After her father loses everything in the Great Depression, the family must relinquish their comfort in an old mansion in the nation’s capital and adopt a more modest life in the country’s rural south.

“Violeta” recalls Allende’s best known and highly successful novel, “The House of Spirits,” which weaves together the personal and the political in a saga stretching across decades.

“Violeta” also details the horrors of the 1970s dictatorships in South America, which saw tens of thousands of suspected political opponents kidnapped, tortured and killed, often through Operation Condor, a U.S.-backed alliance among the region’s right-wing military governments.

“The government was committing atrocities, but you could walk down the street and sleep soundly at night without worrying about common criminals,” Violeta writes of those repressive times.

Violeta’s son is a journalist who seeks exile, first in Argentina, then in Norway after learning he is on the dictatorship’s black list.

Violeta suspect’s her son’s father of involvement in the repression through his work as a pilot. Much of the book involves Violeta’s long, passionate, but troubled relationship with her son’s father following a short, unsatisfying marriage. Ultimately, she obtains contentment late in life with a retired diplomat and naturalist.

Considered the world’s most widely read Spanish-language author, Allende is known for her many novels including “Eva Luna,” “Of Love and Shadows“ and “A Long Petal of the Sea,” as well as nonfiction books such as “Paula,” a 1994 memoir.

Allende left Chile for exile two years after Salvador Allende, her father’s first cousin, was overthrown in a 1973 coup. Isabel Allende lived for years in Venezuela before settling in the United States.

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Review: Allende's 'Violeta,' an epic South American tale

Chilean writer isabel allende’s latest novel is “violeta,” an epic tale that transports readers across a century of south american history, through economic collapse, dictatorship and natural disasters like an earthquake and a hurricane, article bookmarked.

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“Violeta,” by Isabel Allende (Random House)

Chilean writer Isabel Allende's latest novel is “Violeta,” an epic tale that transports readers across a century of South American history, through economic collapse, dictatorship and natural disasters like an earthquake and a hurricane.

From the aftermath of World War I to the present day, narrator Violeta del Valle recounts the story of her life in an unnamed South American country with a book-long letter to her grandson Camilo.

Violeta tells of living through the Spanish flu pandemic as the youngest child and only daughter in a family of five sons. After her father loses everything in the Great Depression the family must relinquish their comfort in an old mansion in the nation's capital and adopt a more modest life in the country's rural south.

“Violeta” recalls Allende's best known and highly successful novel, “The House of Spirits,” which weaves together the personal and the political in a saga stretching across decades.

“Violeta” also details the horrors of the 1970s dictatorships in South America, which saw tens of thousands of suspected political opponents kidnapped, tortured and killed, often through Operation Condor, a U.S.-backed alliance among the region's right-wing military governments.

“The government was committing atrocities, but you could walk down the street and sleep soundly at night without worrying about common criminals,” Violeta writes of those repressive times.

Violeta's son is a journalist who seeks exile, first in Argentina, then in Norway after learning he is on the dictatorship's black list.

Violeta suspect's her son's father of involvement in the repression through his work as a pilot. Much of the book involves Violeta's long, passionate, but troubled relationship with her son's father following a short, unsatisfying marriage. Ultimately, she obtains contentment late in life with a retired diplomat and naturalist.

Considered the world’s most widely read Spanish-language author, Allende is known for her many novels including “Eva Luna,” “Of Love and Shadows“ and “A Long Petal of the Sea,” as well as nonfiction books such as “Paula,” a 1994 memoir.

Allende left Chile for exile two years after Salvador Allende, her father's first cousin, was overthrown in a 1973 coup. Isabel Allende lived for years in Venezuela before settling in the United States.

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• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/inspired-by-her-mother-isabel-allende-publishes-violeta

Inspired by her mother, Isabel Allende publishes new book ‘Violeta’

MIAMI — Shortly before the coronavirus pandemic began, Isabel Allende suffered one of the greatest losses of her life: The death of her mother.

On Tuesday, the Chilean author published “Violeta”, a novel that begins and ends with an epidemic and that covers the last 100 years of history through the eyes of a grandmother inspired by her mom, Panchita, one of the women who marked her the most.

Violeta, a strong woman who manages to overcome innumerable obstacles, gradually reveals details of her family and love life to her grandson Camilo, whom she has raised since the day he was born.

WATCH: Isabel Allende on studying real people for characters in her novels

Set mainly in the Chilean Patagonia, with moments in Argentina, Miami and Norway, the novel deals with a wide range of themes, from feminism and verbal abuse, human rights violations and homosexuality, to amorous passions, infidelity and even global warming.

Throughout its almost 400 pages, it also reviews socialist movements, communism, military dictatorships in the Southern Cone and democracies.

“Violeta, like my mother, was a person, a beautiful woman, that wasn’t very aware of her beauty. She was smart, visionary, talented, with good ideas to make money,” Allende, 79, says in an interview in Spanish from her home in California. “She takes all the chances, whether it’s her love life and the life she wants to lead … The difference is that my mom always depended financially on someone.”

So Violeta, the woman who says to her grandson that her life is worth telling not so much for her virtues as for her sins, is partly Allende’s mother, partly herself and “a lot of imagination.”

The novel, published in the U.S. by Ballantine, a Penguin Random House imprint, begins at the time Panchita was born, during the so-called Spanish flu of 1920, and ends at the time she died, during the coronavirus in 2020. Allende goes through the almost centenarian life of a woman born to a conservative and wealthy Chilean family, a status that changes radically when the Great Depression leaves them homeless.

The original idea for the book arose after the death of Allende’s mother. Knowing that the two had had a very close relationship and got to exchange thousands of daily letters, some of Allende’s friends suggested that she wrote a book about her mother’s life. The novelist was still too emotional to see her mother with the needed distance to write about her.

Months passed and, when she felt stronger, she began “Violeta” inspired by her mother, but with a marked difference: The protagonist is a woman who supports herself and a good part of her family with her businesses.

The character of Camilo, a mischievous and rebellious grandson who Violeta raised and who later became a priest, is inspired by the Chilean Jesuit priest Felipe Berríos del Solar, a social activist critical of the church who fights against inequality and segregation and whom for years has been a “very close friend” of Allende. The author dedicates the book to him, her son Nicolás and her daughter-in-law Lori, her “pillars” at her old age.

And from those conversations between a writer who describes herself as “completely agnostic and feminist” and a progressive priest emerged Camilo, to whom his grandmother Violeta confesses her admiration and tells him that he is the biggest love of her life. In real life, Allende feels the same way for her son Nicolás.

WATCH: Isabel Allende’s newest historical novel tells familiar story of refugee life

Perhaps that is also why a large part of the anecdotes of the character’s childhood are those of her son, who after having made his first communion in a religious school in Venezuela told Allende that he did not believe in God and did not want to go to church anymore, the author recalls.

Throughout her life, Violeta is marked by death: That of her mother; her daughter Nieves, the mother of Camilo (a young drug addict inspired by Jennifer, one of the daughters of Allende’s ex-husband Willy Gordon); her governess Miss Taylor and a lover, Roy.

The writer herself experienced the death of her 29-year-old daughter Paula in 1992, and that partly helped her with the character.

“I could describe that terrible pain of seeing your daughter die because I had lived it,” says Allende, who in 1994 published the memoir “Paula” in honor of her daughter.

Along with love, violence, women’s strength and the absence of fathers, death is a recurring theme in Allende’s books, from “The House of the Spirits” to “A Long Petal of the Sea.” This time, the message she wanted to convey was what she saw as her mother got older and run out of friends and loved ones.

“Loss is an important thing of old age. There’s so much loss! Everything dies on you,” says the writer as she reflects on the experience of her mother, who passed away at the age of 98. “It was important to make that clear in the book, that the longer you live, the more you lose.”

For Allende, the world’s most widely read living Spanish-language author, the coronavirus pandemic has been an opportunity. Away from her travels and world promotional tours, she has gained the time she needed to turn more stories into books. “Violeta,” Allende’s second book of the pandemic after the non-fiction “The Soul of a Woman,” already has a third ready: A novel about refugees that is in the process of being translated (the author writes fiction in Spanish.)

And as she does every year, on January 8 she began writing a new one.

“I have had time, silence and solitude to write,” says the author, expressing gratitude that no one in her family has fallen ill with COVID-19. “Maybe I always have stories, I don’t need inspiration; what I need is the time to write.”

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Allende Examines the Caribbean’s Chaotic History Through New Novel

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Review: Allende’s ‘Violeta,’ an epic South American tale

Isabel allende's latest novel is "violeta" transports readers across a century of south american history, through economic collapse, dictatorship and natural disasters like an earthquake and a….

Isabel Allende’s latest novel is “Violeta” transports readers across a century of South American history, through economic collapse, dictatorship and natural disasters like an earthquake and a hurricane.

Chilean writer Isabel Allende’s latest novel is “Violeta,” an epic tale that transports readers across a century of South American history, through economic collapse, dictatorship and natural disasters like an earthquake and a hurricane.

From the aftermath of World War I to the present day, narrator Violeta del Valle recounts the story of her life in an unnamed South American country with a book-long letter to her grandson Camilo.

Violeta tells of living through the Spanish flu pandemic as the youngest child and only daughter in a family of five sons. After her father loses everything in the Great Depression, the family must relinquish their comfort in an old mansion in the nation’s capital and adopt a more modest life in the country’s rural south.

“Violeta” recalls Allende’s best known and highly successful novel, “The House of Spirits,” which weaves together the personal and the political in a saga stretching across decades.

“Violeta” also details the horrors of the 1970s dictatorships in South America, which saw tens of thousands of suspected political opponents kidnapped, tortured and killed, often through Operation Condor, a U.S.-backed alliance among the region’s right-wing military governments.

By Isabel Allende

Random House

336 pages, $24.99

“The government was committing atrocities, but you could walk down the street and sleep soundly at night without worrying about common criminals,” Violeta writes of those repressive times.

Violeta’s son is a journalist who seeks exile, first in Argentina, then in Norway, after learning he is on the dictatorship’s blacklist.

Violeta suspect’s her son’s father of involvement in the repression through his work as a pilot. Much of the book involves Violeta’s long, passionate but troubled relationship with her son’s father following a short, unsatisfying marriage. Ultimately, she obtains contentment late in life with a retired diplomat and naturalist.

Considered the world’s most widely read Spanish-language author, Allende is known for her many novels, which include “Eva Luna,” “Of Love and Shadows” and “A Long Petal of the Sea,” as well as nonfiction books such as “Paula,” a 1994 memoir.

Allende left Chile for exile two years after Salvador Allende, her father’s first cousin, was overthrown as president in a 1973 coup. She lived for years in Venezuela before settling in the United States.

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The cover of VIOLETA looks like a Tamara de Lempicka painting: a beautiful woman with light brown eyes and lustrous black hair surrounded by giant pink roses. The spine is a seafoam green with another pink rose. The packaging of Isabel Allende’s latest novel is exquisite. Even though they say you can’t judge a book by its cover, I think in this case you most certainly can.

Is it rare that anyone writing about a pandemic might pen a heartwarming, funny and touching story about what it is like to survive global trauma? Yes, it is. There aren’t too many books about the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic that make you laugh and cry and feel like life is always worth fighting for. The characters survive, but their new mettle is tested by another event: the Great Depression. For Violeta, the youngest child in a family with five older boys, these moments of her growing up are filled with drama and passion, loss and wonder.

"[VIOLETA] is life-affirming, and when you fall in love with the title character, there is little that you wouldn’t do to be worthy of her love and respect."

VIOLETA is her story, told through one very long letter to someone she loves and trusts more than anyone else. With Allende’s gorgeous literary voice, Violeta writes her letter to each of us and makes us feel the need to be worthy of all her revelations.

There are few authors turning out a book every year or two who have created the kind of fan base that Allende has. Her work is easy to read but deceptively so. She always begins writing on January 8th of each year, finding a way for us to get to know her and her people and their history through love stories. The characters in her novels have a sense of purpose, spirit and soul that never fail to face all oppositions head on. Even when they don’t win or survive, they have given their all and earned our love and respect.

Violeta is no less a character than that. Her poised, honest and beautiful tone of description and the emotional quality of her every word remind us that Allende is one of the most adept and fascinating, but understandable, writers on the scene. Violeta tells stories of constant change and upheaval, and her life’s tale perfectly mirrors our experiences now. Yet we can learn a lot from her because she’s not whining about wearing a mask. She’s growing up in tumult, and in her story of bravery and love, she gives us the strength to rise against our oppressors and live another day, even in quarantine.

This is a perfect book for being homebound or restricted in what you do now. Reading it takes you to so many different places and gives you a heady sense of being able to dream well beyond our constrictions at this time. It is life-affirming, and when you fall in love with the title character, there is little that you wouldn’t do to be worthy of her love and respect.

Isabel Allende is a literary treasure. Her love stories are dire and deep, but also romantic and brave. Love really does win every fight for her, and for Violeta (and us), that is the case here in this wonderful novel. Curl up and let Violeta tell you a story. Snowed in or quarantined, healthy or sick, you will not want VIOLETA to end.

Reviewed by Jana Siciliano on February 4, 2022

Violeta by Isabel Allende

• Publication Date: January 24, 2023
• Genres: Fiction , Historical Fiction
• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• ISBN-10: 0593496221
• ISBN-13: 9780593496220

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The Literary Trails

Book reviews | movie reflections | legal musings, book review: violeta by isabel allende.

Violeta. A hundred-year-old woman. A woman who has lived through two pandemics, two world wars, imperialism, colonialism, and post-colonialism. A woman who has seen the history unfolding before her eyes. A woman who has never let conventions stop her or forging forward in time to make her mark. Well, she must have something to tell when she decides to recount her life.

In September of 2020, Isabel Allende’s Violeta recounts her life in a long letter to someone named Camilo, someone she loves more than anyone in the world. Born on one stormy Friday in 1920 in Chile, Violeta del Valle is a hundred years old when she decides to pen down her life story that “is worthy of a novel, because of […] sins than […] virtues.”

A single girl in a family of five boys, she learns to carve out a space for herself at the very beginning of her life. Losing a family fortune, suffering an exile, luxuriating in a passionate love affair only to be undone by it in parts, experiencing a substantial amount of death and loss – Violeta’s life is indeed worthy of a novel with its fair share of calamities. A life exquisitely lived and suffered.

In the country where “[…] there are always calamities, and it’s not hard to connect them to some life event,” Violeta deftly converges the personal with the politics. Not only the global events but also the wars and events unfolding in her own country, Chile. However, it is the impact of politics on the character that propels the story forward.

Violeta’s life begins with an onslaught of Spanish Influenza followed by the Great War and the depression that followed. The Great Depression of 1929 changed the fortunes of many, Violeta’s father amongst them. The novel explores political commentary through the lives of its characters. Although the fall of the oppressive regime is a cause for celebration, it also brings along a tragedy. Embarrassed by bankruptcy and thwarted by the financial collapse, the Del Valle family goes into exile.

Although a time of personal trial for the family, Violeta finds greater freedom in her time of exile. For a while, she seems to have it all, from traveling to romancing a young German to building a business with her brother. But Violeta is not a conventional woman who wants to bask in the love of her husband. She was terrified at the prospect of having children as “it would be the end of my relative freedom.”

In the backdrop of Violeta’s awakening, the book also chronicles the rise and shaping of the feminist movement. The reader sees Violeta shaping her destiny. From being the woman who marries for a social convention to the woman who shamelessly gives in to the hedonistic pleasures of the body, thus, moving from the category of an angel to a homewrecker. “[…] Fabian and I made love in pitch-dark silence; I never imagined there were other options […] Julian ripped my dress off like a puma with two swipes of his hand, never even giving a chance to protest. […] I abandoned any hint of resistance, willing my body to come undone and melt in his arms.”

After amassing great wealth and status, Violeta’s political awakening is more forced by the events that affect her personally. When her son flees the country due to the oppression and horror unleashed by the ruling regime, Violeta finally realizes the horror of the dictatorship. Although never personally involved in the criminal enterprise of her lover, Julian, she remains a silent spectator even when she suspects that all is not right. In that sense, her later acts of charity feel rather too little, too late. And yet, this is also what makes her more real. She is no angel, and she does not pretend to be one.

Written spectacularly, the book by telling the story of one woman’s unconventional journey also reveals the history of a nation. What remains with the reader a long time after the book finishes, is Violeta’s lust for life. With her steely fortitude, she shapes and re-shapes herself. She writes the next chapter of her life at sixty when most would give up. It makes the book a worthy read – her passion and the strength to start anew.

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Violeta by Isabel Allende

• Publication Date: January 24, 2023
• Genres: Fiction , Historical Fiction
• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• ISBN-10: 0593496221
• ISBN-13: 9780593496220
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Violeta [English Edition]: A Novel Kindle Edition

• Print length 338 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher Ballantine Books
• Publication date January 25, 2022
• File size 7687 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
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• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B093G9NJSX
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ballantine Books (January 25, 2022)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 25, 2022
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 7687 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 338 pages
• #56 in Hispanic American Literature & Fiction
• #77 in Literary Sagas
• #204 in Romance Literary Fiction

About the authors

Isabel allende.

Isabel Allende is one of the most widely read authors in the world, having sold more than seventy-seven million books. Born in Peru and raised in Chile, Isabel won worldwide acclaim in 1982 with the publication of her first novel, The House of the Spirits. Since then, she has authored more than twenty-six bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including Daughter of Fortune, Island Beneath the Sea, Paula, and The Wind Knows My Name.

In 1996, following the death of her daughter, Paula, Allende established a charitable foundation in her honor. The foundation has awarded grants to more than one hundred nonprofits worldwide, delivering life-changing care to hundreds of thousands of women and girls.

In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded Allende the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, and in 2018 she received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation. Allende lives in California.

Frances Riddle

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