"Eva Luna", by Isabel Allende was first written in 1987 --translated from Spanish to English. I've read most books of her books - but never read this one.....which is now available as a Kindle download-- for $2.99Eva, ( a storyteller much like Isabel Allende, and revolutionary), begins this story -- narrating in first person. She describes her mother, Consuelo's, life. Her mother worked for a professor-- and usually did everything he asked her to do. One day an Indian Gardner was bitten by a sna...

Earlier this year, my friend Nina and I were discussing internationally written literature, specifically from Latin America. We both had a connection to it for a few reasons, which prompted her to suggest a buddy read. We settled on Isabel Allende, and she selected Eva Luna. We spent the last week reading the book and discussing some of the key points and will continue to do so, I'm sure. For now, I'm sharing some of the highlights of my thoughts.Let's set the stage. Early to mid 20th century. S...

Perhaps it is merely a reflection of my feebleness as a reader that I assume the basic conceit of any first person novel is for the author to be the narrator, more or less. In my defense, this book is dedicated to Allende's mother. And the story itself is about a girl who loses her mother and loves her mother deeply and has all kinds of wooooonderful adventures, only to discover writing and have even more maaaaaaagical adventures, and become highly successful, and be pursued by a general and als...

I can’t say this book is among my five favorite from Isabel Allende, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a really good book. It mostly means Allende is an excellent writer, and there are many of her books to make the list.One of the things I liked most, is the dual narrative. One side telling the story of Eva, the protagonist, conceived when Eva’s mother takes pity on a man who after being bitten by a snake is condemned to death, and Rolf, whose destiny finally brings him to South America where he

Set in an unnamed South American country with the usual magic realism, an assortment of generals and dictators, a good dose of sensuality and an eclectic cast of characters, the novel moves from the 1950s to the 1980s. It is told in the first person and is the story of Eva Luna, told in parallel with the much less detailed story of Rolf Carle. It is the story of a storyteller and has lots of twists and turns. It has been described as picaresque. Allende challenges the usual male hegemony she fin...

What a joy to read! I was completely fascinated by Eva Luna's imaginative universe, blending tale, fiction and reality. His adventures are sometimes so incredible that we no longer really know what world to be in. But that is precisely what I think is more to me and what makes the novel so charming.

It is hard for me to recapture the innocence I once had with books, where the words were so real it was like being in a super reality. Age, a better understanding of the world, and my new education to psychotherapy has made literature more understandable and a little less mystical. But Allende gets me pretty close. The psychological lense of me understands Eva Luna's storytelling as therapeutic tool, her retelling of a traumatic past with newly imagined happiness makes the present palatable and

It's the only book by Allende I have read and I really liked the story. The characters are very varied. There's an important character, an Arab immigrant, who is a lovely person, honest, generous and modest.Anyway, I've been told this author can get very repetitive... Save for that sweet Arab immigrant, I didn't find much in the book that might encourage me to go on with other works by Allende.

"She placed at my feet the treasures of the Orient, the moon, and beyond. She reduced me to the size of an ant so I could experience the universe from that smallness; she gave me wings to see it from the heavens; she gave me the tail of a fish so I would know the depths of the sea."I've read a few of Allende's novels and her memoir. I must say, I've settled on this one as my favorite just as one would settle on choice of wine: a few sips here and there, tightening of the tastebuds around one fla...

This is my first novel by Isabel Allende, and I am probably not shocking anyone by saying that she puts the "magic" in magical realism. And with the story of "Eva Luna", she weaved a brightly colored, shimmering yarn about the magic of story-telling, which may very well be the last remaining bit of magic well and truly alive in the world.The first strand of this story is the life of Consuelo, Eva's mother, her strange upbringing and life until the birth of her only daughter. Eva's strand of the

The first book I’ve read by Isabel Allende, and she reminds me of Neil Gaiman: mesmerising popular storytelling at its best. Eva Luna is a novel from the 1980s, and as such its use of stereotypes sometimes falls below standards now expected in the literary world, but the characters were so grand and involving that they often felt more like archetype than stereotype. The unnamed fictional country in which Eva lives seems designed to take in as much as possible of the northern half of South Americ...

A story about a storyteller stumbled from one bizarre event to others while also telling stories of these eccentric personalities she met, came and went through her life, whom she loved or had loved her and shaped her life. Eva Luna herself, started as a rebellious orphan, full of wonder with fantastic imagination and streak of dramatic insanity that could surprise you when its infrequent but impressive occurrence. Weirdly enough, despite being supposedly such a talented inventor of fantastical

The Good:The characters are all amazing - mythical figures inhabiting an unnamed part of Latin America some time in the middle of the 20th century. The setting is vivid, and the series of vignettes through the first half of the book read like fairy tales. It's also pretty funny.The Bad:The sense of magic really died away in the second half. It became a fairly shallow political story full of neat resolutions and pleasant anticlimaxes. And books about writers always feel a bit self-congratulatory....