The house of the spirits

I don't think this is a bad book, I just think it's a bad book for me. This book and One Hundred Years of Solitude are held up as high points in the magical realism style, and I liked neither. I would be tempted to write off the genre altogether, if not for counterexamples like The Shadow of the Wind or Blindness which I quite enjoyed.

Who would have thought... there's more to a book than genre :).

I do love the idea of a story carrying through multiple generations, I just had a hard time being interested in the primary characters. Esteban in particular is so prominent and painful to read. Not in a "love to hate" way, but in a "I don't want to read any more about this guy" way. Hard to overcome that. And the odds are good that any break from his story is going to contain rape and/or child abuse. Really not what I'm looking for in a book.

This is a beautifully written family saga and a lovely example of magical realism. It spans three generations and depicts a country undergoing drastic political change. The patriarch is Esteban Trueba, a man with a violent, manic temper and rigid ideals, while the matriarch is Clara del Valle, who is a clairvoyant, kind, and gentle soul.

I admired many aspects of this story, especially the characters. I liked how the relationship between Garcia Tercero and Esteban Trueba evolved, near the end, and their last conversations. Esteban Trueba's granddaughter Alba was a richly drawn, strong woman who becomes wise with her experiences and shares some fascinating insights about love and fate. The author depicts the people in her story world with compassion, something that made everyone memorable and the storyline relevant forever.

Some traits of this story reminded me of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book--for one thing, she never actually names the country we are reading about (it's Chile), The President, or The Poet. A few times, when Esteban Trueba starts ranting, he speaks for two or three pages without a full stop. I couldn't help but think of Autumn of the Patriarch. (That was hard.)

Too much happens in this riveting saga to summarize in a review, so I'll simply say that I recommend it highly.