Book Review: A Long Petal to the Sea

A LONG PETAL OF THE SEA by Isabel Allende

Published May 21, 2019, by Ballentine Books

Thank you, Goodreads, for this giveaway.

The title is a reference to a poem by Pablo Neruda, who’s in this novel.

This novel is epic. The style strikes me as somewhat old-fashioned in that it has an omniscient narrator and frequently this narrative voice is telling the reading historical information. I enjoy how real historical figures — Pablo Neruda and Salvador Allende (the author’s second cousin once removed) and Elizabeth Eidenbenz — appear in the book.

Spain and Chile aren’t countries I’ve researched, so the history is helpful and I appreciate it. I’ve seen the tv show Cable Girls (badly dubbed on Netflix), and that’s how I first learned about the Spanish Civil War.

Although this is historical, it reminds me of the past few years. The rise of fascism, refugees being labeled “undesirables” and imprisoned in Spanish concentration camps. The stuff of nightmares. The later rise of fascism in Chile. The economic and class situation in Chili in 1983, after years of a dictatorship reminds me of the U. S. today.

Here’s one of the disturbing similarities: