3.5

☀️ The novel is relentless and brutal, moving us on in a breakneck kind of way. The author takes few breaths herself and we hurtle with little air through the dark tunnels of her tale. If you are able to bear the weight of her words, and the beauty, pain and savagery that afflicts every character, you will find a redemptive element at the very end where and when you least expect it. Just remember her family history, for I set that aside as I read, so that the final 100 pages hit me as if the sky...

i honestly don't know how anyone considers themselves well-read. there is just so much to read.this one was on my mental tbr for years, and i still don't feel any closer to well-read for having picked it up. but i do feel glad i did.the depiction of family, love, bloodlines, sorrow, magic, mortality, hatred, bigotry, politics, uprising, poverty, wealth, power here...wow!there were moments where this lost me, but it almost immediately won me back every time. this was poetic and somehow measured e...

ارواحنا لا مكان لها بهذا العالم و لو سكنا بيوت من ألف غرفة نظل نركض بجنون خلف الحرية و الحب..المال والجمال؛العدل و السلطة؛السيادة و الاستقلال عبر 75 عام و ثلاث اسر تاخذنا الليندى لنلهث خلف السراب و نتهاوى تحت خيبات الامل في بيت قديم فتح لايزابيل ابواب الادب..ننهض لنعاني العزلة و القسوة و الاغتراب ليهزمنا الموت فنفقد الاحبة و تفترسنا ارواح هائمة تبغى عدلا لم تراه في دنيانا لأول مرة ارغب في كتابة مراجعة بشكل ما و اتراجع ☆لانها لن تجلب الا المشاكل فلنقنع بما هو متاح ☆اهناك انواع كثيرة من الحياة تجع...

"If this world is going to be a better place for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, it will be women who make it so." —Isabel Allende.Phewee!The House of the Spirits is a tumultuous epic which chronicles four generations of two extraordinary families.The eponymous house is large: it boasts three courtyards and a Chiléan version of the Addams Family.Imagine too, if you will, Barrabás, the somewhat unnatural domesticated dog/horse, who was ill-advisedly fed olive oil until he covered th...

House of the Spirits started my love affair with Isabel Allende's writing twenty years ago. I remember how the first line "Barrabas came to us from the sea" left me captivated and eager to read on. In college, I was fortunate that La Casa de los Espiritus was required reading for one of my classes, so I read the prose a second time in Spanish. Allende's writing is exceptional in both languages. Recently, I completed Allende's memoir The Sum of Our Days. She reveals that Clara represents her own ...

جولة لا تُنسى في بيت الأرواح:::::::::::::::::::::::::هذه رواية تنطق بقداسة الأنثىتمجد السحر الأنثوي البراقتحكي تاريخ الدولة الأنثى أو الأنثى الدولةتشيــليأرض الجنيات والساحرات وعرائس البحرهذه رواية السنوات البحرية المحفوظة في ذاكرة وراثية لا تضيع أبدا‏ بل تنزلق بلطف عبر الأجيال النسوية الرحبة الصدور والطيبة كعجينة تراب من رحم الأرض ‏خصبة وشغوفةوالشغف يكاد يصرخ متخطيا حدود العقل فيما سطرت إيزابيل بتاريخ عرق عائلتها ‏النصف مخبولة والمعجونة بالسحرأو فلنقلتاريخ إنساني سطرته الأرواح الشفافة وهي من ذل...

When I was a kid, me and my brother used to spend most weekends at our grandparents house. And most of those weekends we would watch one of the same two movies on the good ol' VCR: Steel Magnolias and The House of the Spirits. No one seems to know the latter movie when I mention it, but it starred a bunch of impressive names: Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close, Antonio Banderas and Winona Ryder. My memory might be painting a better picture than the truth, but me and my brother LOVED the mov...

2.5 stars, actually. (Still waiting for Goodreads to give me that half-star option.) Let's be honest, Isabel Allende is chick lit that you're not embarrassed to read on the Metro. It's got just enough faux-Garcia-Marquez, magical-realism-lite charm to fool people into thinking it's moderately intellectual. I don't have a big problem with that (as long as people realize what's going on) because Allende is a fine storyteller. This novel, her first and most famous, is a fairly traditional family sa...

Gabriel Garcia Marquez comparisons aside, it's hard to review this book without references to the magical realism and the narrative styles of Latin America. I truly believe that anyone not familiar with the above mentioned, would likely be a bit thrown, even put off by these influences. Still, this is a brilliantly written story, epic in its truest sense. Covering four generations of women (with a man as the common thread between them), it races through the simplicity of the old world into the c...