There is a huge amount of surface detail, both historical and personal, and a reader can only admire the extent to which Allende must have researched some of the scenes here. Such descriptions are carefully done, but all serve the basic traditionalism of the plot, which is quite old-fashioned in its epic, romantic arc and can lapse into dullness.Īllende’s prose style in A Long Petal of the Sea can become tiring, which is disappointing considering the potential of the plot. She was breast-feeding her baby, and had large breasts, clean skin, and lustrous hair.” Becoming a mother had softened her, giving her curves where before she had only angles. The last time he had seen her was in December, with a bulging belly and a face covered in acne. There is “natural chivalry”, much talk of chastity and Catholicism and the “free love” of revolutionary Spain, but also a quite heteronormative emphasis on reproduction as the means by which women become beautiful: “He remembered her as being skinny, with narrow hips and a flat chest, thick eyebrows and strong features: the kind of woman who has no false pride in her looks, and who, with age, would become lean or masculine. That said, Allende often succumbs to broad brushstrokes in defining her characters’ sexual relationships, which again become essentially emblematic of societal binaries. The book is taut with desire, and the practicalities of marriage, births and familial relationships provide an effective network of restrictions against which Allende can explore the tug of lust and love. The two brothers with which the story begins, for example, are Guillem and Victor, one is bulky, manly, and a warrior, the other is skinny, romantic, and poetic. Often, that means that stereotypes come into play, or the characters themselves become emblematic of certain archetypal figures. This generational saga, carrying the reader from the 1930s right through to the early 1990s, is stacked with historical detail, though it often feels like the research takes prominence, and characters take a back seat in their own story. Though this novel does not have the magical realism of some of Allende’s other work, it retains a romantic sweep. Victor, who marries Roser platonically in order to gain passage to a ship outfitted by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, has worked as a medic in the battlefield, and the two escape to Chile to seek a better life. When the two protagonists become refugees, Roser flees across the Pyrenees whilst heavily pregnant, eventually giving birth to Victor’s brother’s son, whose father is killed in battle. Beginning in the final year of the Spanish Civil War, when it is becoming clear to Victor Dalmau and Roser Bruguera that the Republican cause is doomed to fail, Isabel Allende’s A Long Petal of the Sea covers half a century of political and social upheavals across Spain and Chile.
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