Smiling ear-to-ear!!!!! Awwwwww that was fun!!! Isabel Allende - "QUEEN OF STORYTELLING"....born into a Chilean family - blends many of my favorite topics in this story ..... .......love, aging, pessimism, optimism, humor, seriousness ( political - social issues), history and personal background stories taking place in some of the most fascinating places on earth: Brooklyn, Brazil, Guatemala, Canada, and Chile, .......chaos & drama, great chemistry between her characters, atrocious weather, ( ch...

Isabel Allende has been a favorite author of mine since I read her House of the Spirits for the first time when I was in high school. Allende will always hold a special place in my heart because with her magical realism brand of writing, I gained entry into the world of Hispanic women writers, and have been Latin America and its writers ever since. Having read many of Allende's novels and memoirs at this point, I always find myself captivated by her writing, immersing myself in the novel for man...

It's frustrating to read a book that feels like it could be so much better. Isabel Allende's latest book, In The Midst Of Winter, has a lot of promise but as it turns out I felt like it delivered a fairly disjointed uneven narrative. Lucia is a 62 year old Chilean, living temporarily in New York. Richard is Lucia's landlord, and he had lived for many years in Brazil. Evelyn is from Guatemala. One stormy night, Lucia, Richard and Evelyn are thrown together, and they end up telling each other thei...

This was the monthly buddy read between Angela,Esil and I. I love many of the books this author has written, although I thought her earlier novels were the most powerful. The first few chapters of this one are meant to familiarize the reader with the characters. Then we started exploring their back stories,and at first I thought this might be her most powerful book yet. Unfortunately didn't feel that way the end. She introduced something that seemed like a gimmicky artifice to me. I asked mysel...

Life seems to dole out hopelessness like the flight of a wingless bird.Richard Bowmaster looks out the window of his three-story brownstone in Brooklyn with much apprehension. Abundance is to be embraced unless it is the form of a snow storm. The city has all but shut down with its streets almost impassable. As a professor at NYU, no classes can be a point of celebration.Tucked under another abundance in the form of blankets in the freezing basement apartment, Lucia Maraz considers her options.

So, you know when someone puts a plate in front of you and says 'It's hot. Don't touch the plate.' and you immediately touch the plate. You just had to see for yourself. Yeah, that's how I felt with this one. I read so many less than stellar reviews of this one but I had to find out for myself. I wanted to read this one since I first heard about it. Then I saw the wonderful Isabel Allende talk about the book and I couldn't *WAIT* to read it. Perhaps despite all the reviews, I still had such high...

EXCERPT: Richard Bowmaster was Lucia’s boss at New York University where she had a one year contract as a visiting professor. Once the semester was over, her life was a blank slate: she would need another job and somewhere else to live while she decided on her long term future. Sooner or later she would return to end her days in Chile, but that was still quite a way off. And since her daughter, Daniela, had moved to Miami to study marine biology, and was possibly in love and planning to stay, th...

With this book, Isabel Allende returns to subject matter that made her reputation as a premier storyteller. Invoking elements of magic realism into a powerful story of political terrorism. The title In the Midst of Winter holds a double meaning. The action of the present day which forms the framework, takes place during the Snowzilla called Jonas in January, 2016, but it also refers to the promise of summer in an ice bound land of old age. Richard Bowmaster, an NYU professor of Latin American an...

The writing was great, the idea was fantastic... the actual book a bit disappointing. What i would recommend with this is that if you are interested in reading this book know this: The english translation is beautifully written, but the plot itself is very wide reaching, telling four different story lines at the same time and mixing them together in a way that i personally didn't love. But if you don't mind different plots mixing together as if they are connected even thought they are not, highl...

I greatly enjoy Allende's writing. In the Midst of Winter did not disappoint. It’s born from a "what if" premise. Three lives converge, whether by chance or fate, on the eve of a blizzard. The life stories of the three characters are revealed as the narrative (and storm) progresses. Their back stories are complex and are necessary to understand their motives for their actions following the event of their meeting. I am purposefully being vague because there is quite an unexpected twist in the sto...

Disappointed,as Allende is a great,sensitive writer,who paints characters so well.This book read like a trashy geriatric erotica with thrown in murder mystery and current immigration agenda.What could be so thought provocative and touching,story of Evelyn,the illegal immigrant from Guatemala,finding her better life,turned into a farce and love story for self-obsessed Richard and Lucia.We get sensitive-sih flashbacks to life stories of people who in modern day,are ridiculous and off-putting.Felt

Once again, Isabel Allende proves she is a master storyteller of character-driven historical fiction! In this story, she thrusts three unrelated people together in mysterious unforeseen circumstances. During the time when they plot about how to deal with their "problem", they share their heartbreaking life stories with each other. I especially developed an affinity to middle-aged Lucia. I felt a kinship to her when she describes her relationship issues and her mother's poignant death. This book

'In the Midst of Winter' is a beautifully written and quietly charming novel. In this story we are introduced to three characters, Lucia Maraz, Richard Bowmaster and Evelyn Ortega, whose lives become inextricably interlinked over the course of a few days in a winter storm in New York. Simply put Lucia is a goddess. I love her. She's complex, she's wise, a bit batty, definitely lonely, incredibly funny and wonderfully dynamic... At almost sixty-two it feels like she has lived a 100 different live...

In the Midst of Winter features three distinct individuals who are brought together during a crippling blizzard. All of Brooklyn is shut down. Richard Bowmaster, a 60-year-old academic, is on his way home from the emergency vet clinic when he rear-ends a vehicle driven by Evelyn Ortega, a youthful, fragile-looking undocumented Guatemalan. To his surprise and chagrin, she knocks on his door later that evening seeking help. Claiming limited Spanish-speaking skills, he enlists the aid of his tenant...

A tale of a middle-aged academic woman in Brooklyn, Lucia, joining forces with a male colleague (and landlord and department head), Richard, to help a young undocumented woman from Guatemala in serious trouble, Evelyn. The latter works as a nanny to a gangster figure, whose car she has borrowed turns out to have a body in its trunk. Deportation is unacceptable because the gang MS-13 is targeting her and her family. The effort to help pulls Lucia and Richard out of safe routines, revives the spir...

In The Midst Of Winter is written by Isabel Allende, a gifted storyteller.There are three main characters in this novel. Richard is a 60 year old professor, Lucia is a visiting professor from Chile,living in Richard's Brooklyn basement apartment, and Evelyn is a Guatemalan refugee working as a caregiver for a young boy with cerebral palsy. Brooklyn is blasted by a freak winter storm which leads Richard to rear-end Evelyn's vehicle, causing them to open the trunk where they find a dead body. Whil...