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Title: Portrait in Sepia : A Novel by Isabel Allende ISBN: 0-06-093636-3 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 22 October, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.77 (47 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Subtle, Like a Watercolor
Comment: Isabel Allende writes wonderful books that focus on women and their world without being in the slightest bit feminist. "Portrait in Sepia," one of Allende's finest works and my favorite, tells the story of Aurora del Valle, the daughter of a half-Chinese mother and a wealthy Chilean father. Although Aurora's selfish and self-indulgent father denied her existence, her mother did find true love, and a very brief marriage (she died in childbirth) with Aurora's father's cousin, Severo del Valle.
After her birth in San Francisco's Chinatown, Aurora was raised by her mother's parents until the death of her sweet and angelic grandfather, Tao Chi'en. Then her wealthy (and somewhat arrogant), "paternal" grandmother, Paulina del Valle steps in. (It is interesting to note that Aurora's maternal grandmother, Eliza Sommers, was the protagonist of a previous book by Allende, "Daughter of Fortune.")
Although the primary focus of this book is on Aurora, it is the widowed Paulina who is the most engaging and, in my opinion, the most lovable, character Allende has ever created. Paulina is certainly a character with a strong will and she usually accomplishes what she sets out to do.
After her husband's death, Paulina, seeing no reason to remain in San Francisco, packs up and moves her entire family back to Chile, Aurora included. She also marries her very own butler and, when back in Chile, she manages to pass him off as an impoverished British lord. Thus, rather then being ridiculed, Paulina becomes the object of envy instead. Williams (the butler), Aurora later tells us, spoke exactly four words of Spanish and so was, of necessity, rather silent and taciturn in Spanish-speaking Chile. His silence, however, was revered by the locals who saw him as wise and full of both pride and mystery.
Although it may not be apparent at first, Aurora and Paulina are a lot alike. They are both independent women who become trapped in very traditional, but loveless, marriages. Both women rebel in the sense that they seek to transcend their circumstances, something 19th century women, in San Francisco or in Chile, usually didn't do. Paulina becomes a shrewd businesswoman, while Aurora becomes a photographer. Both women, however, remain true to their cultural heritage and to Chile. Aurora seeks, through her art, to capture "the multifaceted and tormented face of Chile" on film. And, at the age of thirty, Aurora wants and needs to recapture the first five years of her life, the five years she spent in San Francisco with her maternal grandparents.
Part of the charm of this book is Allende's very skillful rendering of period detail. She makes both 19th century San Francisco and 19th Chile come alive. Although this isn't a historical or a political novel, (nor is it a feminist one), Allende does align her protagonists with the feminine side of political issues. This is not, however, a book that sacrifices story to social commentary. Allende is far too good a storyteller to let that happen and she possesses far too much restraint. Despite that restraint, this book is a sumptuous feast of a romance...high-spirited, lyrical, sensitive, melancholy, rapturous and exuberant. Don't let that put you off..."Portrait in Sepia" is definitely literature, not genre fiction.
I realize that Allende has been compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but I believe that comparisons between these two great Latin American authors are supremely unfair. Each is wonderful is his or her own way. And Allende has come a long way from magic realism and "The House of the Spirits." While Garcia Marquez writes of characters in the subtropical jungles and rainforests of Colombia, Allende's characters are firmly rooted in Chile...a country that is more temperate and more unforgiving. And Allende writes more like a woman than a man; she is more of a romantic, more lyrical in her prose style. She lets us share in the emotional life of her characters more than does Garcia Marquez. They are different writers with different styles, and each one contributes something to his or her work that is lasting and beautiful.
Much of this book is "told" rather than "shown," i.e., dramatized in scenes. In the hands of a lesser writer, this could have been a huge mistake and could have resulted in a book that was dry and boring and without emotional depth. In the hands of a writer as skilled as Allende, however, this device creates a seamless fluidity that only makes the book grow lovlier and lovlier. And we do become involved with the characters, there can be no doubt about that, for they are anything and everything but ordinary.
I don't understand why so many readers didn't care for this book. Perhaps they were looking for something closer to the style of Garcia Marquez. Perhaps they were put off by the "memoir" style of the book and the fact that so much of it is told rather than shown. In my opinion, Allende wanted to keep some distance between the reader and some of the book's more tumultuous events lest the delicacy of the story be disturbed.
I loved the watercolor delicacy of this book and I think one has only to look at the epilogue to recognize that delicacy was part and parcel of this story. As Aurora, herself, says, "I live among duffuse shadings, veiled mysteries, uncertainties; the tone for telling my life is closer to that of a portrait in sepia."
I loved "Portrait in Sepia." I wish I could find more books out there like it.
Rating: 2
Summary: Better Than Her Previous Effort, But Far Below Her Best
Comment: I admit that I had pretty low expectations for Portrait in Sepia, especially when I learned that it was a sequel to Daughter of Fortune (which I consider one of Allende's weaker works). After reading the first 100 pages, I feared that even those low expectations wouldn't be met. These pages, which are set in San Francisco, share the same mistakes that plague Daughter of Fortune. Nowhere can this be better seen than when Allende twice describes her characters as entering "another dimension" after making love. That overblown expression, which left me rolling on the floor in laughter, made me think I was reading a camp sendup of an Allende novel.
Fortunately, the book got better once the setting was moved to Chile. The characters became a little more realistic and the story became more interesting. It at first seemed that by returning the story to Chile, Allende found that emotional core which she needs to tap in order to write effectively. Yet, I soon realized that the reason why the story was better was not because she had found an emotional core. She had instead borrowed from her other books where that quality is present. For instance, the De Valle's are from The House of the Spirits. The theme of photography as a way to insure memory can be found in Of Love and Shadows, as well as in one of the stories in The Stories of Eva Luna. Using narrative to "show" a person's life can be found in Eva Luna. The result is like reading a "Greatest Hits" version of Allende's previous works. While that may sound attractive, it comes across as though she is out of ideas.
Portrait in Sepia provides the reader with glimpses that show Allende is still capable of strong writing. The book contains some vivid characters, employs narrative instead of dialogue to convey the story, and occasionally utilizes effective prose to portray powerful emotion. The problem is that the book doesn't have a subject which is capable of maximizing and focusing these strengths. Until Allende finds that subject, she will continue to diminish her standing as a talented author.
Rating: 3
Summary: Liked the Story, but Not the Way in Which It Was Written
Comment: I loved the story in this book but I didn't care for the writing style. Isabel Allende is a former journalist and, like most journalists, she tells her stories rather than dramatizing them in scenes. There is very little dialogue in the book because of this, just Allende "telling" us the story of the del Valle family through the "voice" of her narrator, Aurora del Valle.
The book takes place in San Francisco's Chinatown, in Peru and mostly, in Chile, something I really enjoyed. The book actually begins before Aurora's birth, though it is Aurora who tells the story, many years later, from Chile. As in most of Allende's books, women dominate. Women are the strong figures, the ones who matter, the ones who take center stage. The men, for the most part, just seem to hover at the periphery. In PORTRAIT IN SEPIA, however, one man is very fully drawn...Aurora's maternal grandfather, Tao Chi'en, and he is a fascinating and likable figure.
PORTRAIT IN SEPIA encompasses a large cast of characters and is, in many ways, a family novel. Tao Chi'en and his wife, Eliza Sommers, who live in Chinatown, have a daughter, Lynn, a gorgeous woman who has an affair with Matias del Valle. When Lynn becomes pregnant, Matias, who doesn't have his sights set on fatherhood, leaves and Lynn dies in childbirth. Lynn's daughter, Aurora, is raised for a short time by Tao Chi'en and Eliza, but circumstances force Eliza to give Aurora to her paternal grandmother, Paulina del Valle.
Paulina del Valle is a larger-than-life character. She's rich, she's eccentric, she ostentatious, she's irreverent. She lives like a man at a time when it was greatly frowned upon for a woman to live like a man, but...Paulina lives like a man better than most men do. When her fortune begins to run low, Paulina gathers up her butler (who becomes more than a butler) and five-year-old Aurora and heads for Santiago where money goes a lot further.
There, we learn more about Aurora's father, Matias, her uncle Severo and his cousin, Nivea. When Aurora arrives in Chile, she is only five years old. When she is narrating her story, she is three decades older and much has happened. Allende has filled PORTRAIT IN SEPIA with larger-than-life themes...love, lust, betrayal, lies, family loyalty...but somehow they don't come off larger-than-life; they come off as being very intimate. I think part of the problem for me was the way Allende chose to tell her story...and I mean "telling" rather than "showing." This gave a very "muted" tone to the book, which tied in well with the title but definitely left something lacking. I found it very difficult to get emotionally involved with the characters. I often felt as though I were reading a newspaper article rather than a novel.
I did love the fact that Chile, itself, often took center stage in this book. Chile is a fascinating place and most of Allende's best writing is done when describing her native country. Don't expect a book like those of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, though, simply because most of PORTRAIT IN SEPIA is set in South America. There is no magic realism in this book and Chile is a very different place than is Colombia. You won't find the hot, steamy, melancholy jungles of Garcia Marquez here. Instead, Chile is a land of volcanoes and snowy mountaintops, forests and lakes. It's cool more than it's hot. But it's fascinating and the look at Chilean history Allende gives us is just as fascinating as is the story of the del Valle family and Tao Chi'en. Maybe more.
Most of the time, I enjoyed reading PORTRAIT IN SEPIA. I did find all the "telling" to be a bit tiresome and ponderous, though, and I wish Allende would learn to dramatize her stories in scenes rather than simply relating them to us in such a journalistic, factual manner.
I would recommend PORTRAIT IN SEPIA to fans of Allende without hesitation. I think others are going to be a bit disappointed in the book. Don't expect anything like HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS, though. This a very different sort of book and one that is much more "down-to-earth."
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Title: Daughter of Fortune: A Novel by Isabel Allende ISBN: 038082101X Publisher: HarperTorch Pub. Date: 30 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende ISBN: 0553273914 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 July, 1986 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Of Love and Shadows by Isabel Allende ISBN: 0553273604 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 April, 1988 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Eva Luna. by Isabel Allende ISBN: 0553280589 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 May, 1989 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Paula by Isabel Allende ISBN: 0060927216 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 24 April, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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