The House of the Spirits

Fülszöveg

Already a best seller and critical success in Europe and
Latin America, The House of the Spirits is the magnificent
epic of the Trueba family—their loves, their ambitions,
their spiritual quests, their relations with one another,
and their participation in the history of their times, a
history that becomes destiny and overtakes them all.
We begin—at the turn of the century, in an unnamed
South American country—in the childhood home of
the woman who will be the mother and grandmother of
the clan, Clara del Valle. A warm-hearted, hypersensi-
tive girl, Clara has distinguished herself from an early
age with her telepathic abilities—she can read fortunes,
make objects move as if they had lives of their own, and
predict the future. Following the mysterious death of
her sister, the fabled Rosa the Beautiful, Clara has been
mute for nine years, resisting all attempts to make her
speak. When she breaks her silence, it is to announce
that she will be married soon.
Her... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Already a best seller and critical success in Europe and
Latin America, The House of the Spirits is the magnificent
epic of the Trueba family—their loves, their ambitions,
their spiritual quests, their relations with one another,
and their participation in the history of their times, a
history that becomes destiny and overtakes them all.
We begin—at the turn of the century, in an unnamed
South American country—in the childhood home of
the woman who will be the mother and grandmother of
the clan, Clara del Valle. A warm-hearted, hypersensi-
tive girl, Clara has distinguished herself from an early
age with her telepathic abilities—she can read fortunes,
make objects move as if they had lives of their own, and
predict the future. Following the mysterious death of
her sister, the fabled Rosa the Beautiful, Clara has been
mute for nine years, resisting all attempts to make her
speak. When she breaks her silence, it is to announce
that she will be married soon.
Her husband-to-be is Esteban Trueba, a stern, will-
ful man, given to fits of rage and haunted by a profound
loneliness. At the age of thirty-five, he has returned to
the capital from his country estate to visit his dying
mother and to find a wife. (He was Rosa's fiancé, and
her death has marked him as deeply as it has Clara.)
This is the man Clara has foreseen—has summoned—
to be her husband; Esteban, in turn, will conceive a
passion for Clara that will last the rest of his long and
rancorous life.
We go with this couple as they move into the extrav-
agant house he builds for her, a structure that everyone
calls "the big house on the corner," which is soon popu-
lated with Clara's spiritualist friends, the artists she
sponsors, the charity cases she takes an interest in, with
Esteban's political cronies, and, above all, with the
Trueba children their daughter, Blanca, a practical,
self-effacing girl who will, to the fury of her father,
form a lifelong liaison with the son of his foreman the
twins, Jaime and Nicolás, the former a solitary, taciturn
boy who becomes a doctor to the poor and unfortu-
nate; the latter a playboy, a dabbler in Eastern religions
and mystical disciplines and, in the third generation,
the child Alba, Blanca 's daughter (the family does not
(zontinued on back flap)
(continuedfrom frontflap)
recognize the real father for years, so great is Esteban's
anger), a child who is fondled and indulged and in-
structed by them all.
For all their good fortune, their natural (and super-
natural) talents, and their powerful attachments to one
another, the inhabitants of "the big house on the cor-
ner^ are not immune to the larger forces of the world.
And, as the twentieth century beats on as Esteban
becomes more strident in his opposition to Commu-
nism as Jaime becomes the friend and confidant of the
Socialist leader known as the Candidate as Alba falls
in love with a student radical the Truebas become
actors—and victims—in a tragic series of events that
gives The House of the Spirits a deeper resonance and
meaning.
It is the supreme achievement of this splendid novel
that we feel ourselves members of this large, passionate
(and sometimes exasperating) family, that we become
attached to them as if they were our own. That this is
the author's first novel makes it all the more extraordi-
nary. The House of the Spirits marks the appearance of a
major, international writer.
Isabel Allende is Chilean and worked for many years
as a journalist. She now lives in Caracas and has re-
cently completed her second novel. Vissza