Reviews
Praise for Isabel Allende "Perfectly crafted and thematically rich . . . Eva Luna's stories are delicate, their images akin to poetry." --Barbara Kingsolver, The New York Times Book Review, on The Stories of Eva Luna "Nothing short of astonishing . . . Isabel Allende has indeed shown us the relationships between past and present, family and nation, city and country, spiritual and political values. She has done so with enormous imagination, sensitivity, and compassion." -- San Francisco Chronicle, on The House of the Spirits, "Majestic . . . both timeless and perfectly timed for today . . . Allende's assured prose vividly evokes her fictional characters [and] historical figures . . . seamlessly juxtaposing exile with homecoming, otherness with belonging, and tyranny with freedom." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A tale that is seductively intimate and strategically charming . . . a virtuoso of lucidly well-told, utterly enrapturing fiction . . . Allende deftly addresses war, displacement, violence, and loss in a novel of survival and love under siege." -- Booklist (starred review) " A Long Petal of the Sea is a rich and transportive novel, epic in scope, about finding love and finding home." -- PopSugar "An absorbing story." --AARP "An immersive read about love and survival." -- Real Simple "Isabel Allende has time and again proven herself a master of magical realism. Her latest novel . . . serves as a paean to human love and endurance." -- Elle "Allende fans have been waiting with bated breath for her latest novel, and A Long Petal of the Sea doesn't disappoint." -- Marie Claire "The wondrous Isabel Allende is back, doing what she does best." -- Read It Forward "In addition to being well-researched historical fiction, it also parallels current issues." -- Book Riot "Powerfully told, this is a soaring, inspirational tale." -- The Orange County Register "Allende . . . has deftly woven fact and fiction, history and memory, to create one of the most richly imagined portrayals of the Spanish Civil War to date, and one of the strongest and most affecting works in her long career." --The New York Times Book Review "Allende's latest . . . marks a return to the time and setting of the book that jump-started her literary career, The House of the Spirits, but with far less supernatural elements and a more expansive engagement of revolution, exile and the determination of the human spirit. . . . A page-turning story rich with history and surprising subplots that keep the novel unpredictable to the end." --Los Angeles Times "Isabel Allende's A Long Petal of the Sea gets to the heart of immigrant struggle. . . . [It] begins, as it ends, with the heart. . . . Victor and Roser's story is compelling. . . . Allende's prose is both commanding and comforting. The author writes eloquently on the struggle of letting go of one culture to embrace a new one and shows that one's origin story is not the whole story. . . . While debate and policy surround the issues of refugees and immigration, Allende reminds us that these issues, at their core, are made up of individuals and their love stories." --USA Today
