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"The Long Petal of the Sea" by Isabelle Allende
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.
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 and Victor’s younger
brother. The two of them are quite different if not indeed opposites – Victor
is calm, reserved, dedicated to his profession, eager to help people even
forgetting about himself at times, occasionally prone to depressive moods.
Roser, on the contrary, is passionate and emotional, often risky, very
determined and sure of her abilities, strong when it’s necessary and brave,
always believing in the best outcome. It seems impossible that they could
become close, but life has its own plans.
The very first episode where Victor brings an
adolescent back to life when his heart has already stopped beating is
fascinating and mystical and perhaps sets the atmosphere for the rest of the
book. I wouldn’t actually define the genre of this novel as magical realism,
which Allende is famous for, but this small piece surely reminds of it.
Later on, Victor and Roser start feeling like the war
is already lost on their side and when the life unexpectedly brings them
closer, the only way to survival is emigration. Allende deeply sympathizes the
refugees and opens the reader a little door into the souls of people whose native
land is no more native to them and Chile is not always kind and accepting.
Again and again Victor and Roser have to move on in search of a place of their
own, trying to build a new home and new family, proving the world around them
that they deserve respect and regard. It is always difficult to change your
life, even more so when you have to do it unexpectedly. Knowing that they never
might see Spain again and if they do, it would be a totally different country,
having to embrace a new culture and way of life, our characters experience a
series of different emotion. Fear of new and unknown, rage at the war and the
way Franko treated their native land, sometimes even loneliness and sadness, at
other times – decisiveness and readiness for hard work, but never despair.
Never, for very soon both Victor and Roser come to realise that Motherland and
home are not necessarily geographical places, but rather people inhabiting
them.
Looking inside the characters Allende still doesn’t
forget about the external events and the reader can observe a faithful and
rather detailed picture of historical events in Spain (civil war and later
Franko’s dictatorship) and Chile (the upheaval of democratic movement followed
by the infamous presidentship of Salvatore Allende and eventually a military
coup d’état and the establishment of totalitarian regime).
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| Santiago de Chile |
Comparing the events in Spain and in Chile, Victor soon finds out that the history very often repeats itself, that people are terrible at learning on other’s mistakes. It is sad on the one hand, but on the other perhaps every nation has to make its own way through the history, carry out its own revolutions and experiments, and unfortunately bump its own head. That is how historical progress works.
Another central theme of Allende’s novel, any of her
novels for that matter, is relations between people. The author discusses and
describes all kinds of bonds – family, friendly, romantic – and inevitably
comes to the conclusion that all those are essential in one’s life, even impossible
to live with. It’s curious, however, how the writer treats the issue of
fidelity. Apparently, physical and mental cheating are quite different things
for her, the former being much less of importance. What is even more curious,
Allende supports the idea that you can love two people simultaneously and
equally deeply but in a different way. Thus, having two lovers at a time has
never been a problem for the characters of any of her novels.
Also considering that the characters go through a lot
of difficult times in their lives, it is not surprising, that the novel widely
discusses the problem of letting
go and opening up to new people. During the war and especially when you are an
emigrant it’s so easy to use connections with the people you loved, or even
lose the people themselves… Still the life doesn’t stop for all the others and
for Victor and Roser it was vital to learn how to accept such losses and go on.
On the other hand, having only each other and no one else around, they had to
seize every opportunity to build new acquaintances and fit in into the knew
society. The characters of Allende are not afraid of opening up to people even
though it may hurt them at some time. It’s life and rather than fearing every
step, try embracing it.
Also Allende doesn’t break up with the tradition,
blood relations are of utmost importance to her, as they generally are in most
Latin American countries. Her characters may part, quarrel, misunderstand each
other but still the family remains unquestionably essential and in difficult
times they always try to keep together and help each other. The ones who
dismiss this idea and refuse to keep to it, are considered strange and are
quite few, to tell the truth.
By the way, this statement is true for our characters
even in a more general meaning. For instance, I loved the way Allende discussed
the elderly age. Her characters, be they twenty or ninety, are ready to love,
experiment and risk, can be proud of their achievements, take pleasure in their profession and be inspired, make
plans for future… can do anything, to tell the truth. Despite the fact that the
life was quite harsh for both Victor and Roser at times, none of them lost
their positive attitude and hopes for the best until the end of their lives and
that is certainly what makes the novel very appealing to me.
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| Pablo Neruda |
The last interesting part I wanted to mention is that Allende introduced real historical personalities into her novel - Pablo Neruda and Salvador Allende, one of them happening to be her own grandfather. While reading I couldn’t get away from the though that Allende wanted to pay a kind of tribute to her late relative and it is an extremely nice way to do it, to tell the truth. Salvador Allende is an ambiguous figure in Chile’s history, however in the novel this character is mainly positive and kind of nostalgic which is not surprising. Still he remains an episodical personage. As for, Neruda, the poet plays a very important role here and in many ways the novel was inspired by his works and biography. The author vividly describes how the poet helped thousands of Spanish refugees to find their new home overseas, transporting them to Chile. He keeps appearing in Victor’s and Roser’s life once in a while, which creates the feeling that he is always somewhere close to the reader. Each part of the novel is preceded by quotes from Neruda’s poems, each of them glowing with love to his native land and helping to reveal the feelings of other characters as well. Neruda himself is shown as an eccentric, self-assured person, who nevertheless has the same aim in life as Victor – to help his land and the people around him.
In general, the novel is a marvellous canvas made of historical events and lives of hundreds of common people. You can’t really say it’s about the war, or revolution, emigration or family bonds, its everything at once, like a huge bright mosaic make of colourful pieces and I advise the readers to look at each of them very attentively so that in the end you could see the whole masterpiece.
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