Beyond the Letters

Isabelle Allende is extremely good at family sagas. So good, that she makes her reader live a whole new life while reading a novel, and by the end of it you feel as if you started ages ago even if you read it in one day. It took me more than one day to read “A Long Petal of the Sea” but believe me, if I hadn’t had to go to work and do my house chores, I wouldn’t have put it away until I was done. The story is very engaging, emotional, captivating, it grabs you to never let go. The plot is simple and complicated at the same time. While the author is focused mainly on two protagonists, throughout the book you meet a range of other people and other stories which are none the less important and meaningful. It’s a family saga on the one hand and a master’s painting of the whole century on the other. It starts off in the midst of the Spanish Civil war where a medical student Victor Dalmau is trying to save as many lives as he can and a young pianist Roser is equally in love with music