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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderfully Allende through and through,
By
This review is from: Ines of My Soul: A Novel (Hardcover)
Based almost entirely on the life of Ines Suarez who lived from 1507 to 1580, Ines of My Soul by Isabel Allende is a lyrically written story of passion, ruthless exploration, rugged courage and love in the 16th century. Allende is one of the few authors that are wonderfully decriptive writers who have the ability to write beautiful and flowing prose and make the reader feel as if they're witnessing and experiencing a scene rather than just reading about it.
Poor and nearly destitute, Ines has a rough life in Spain. Alone because her husband has left to make his fortune in the new world she eventually sets out to search for him. When she arrives Ines learns he has been killed. Determined to make a new life for herself Ines decides to remain in the new colony. She eventually falls under the spell of Don Pedro de Valdivia, field marshal of Francisco Pizarro. Together they undertake the founding of the country of Chile. Richly textured with wonderfully developed historical characters, Allende has written another masterpiece. For those who have their appetites wetted for further reading on this period of history, Allende includes a helpful bibliography that she freely admits is incomplete. I wonder though how many of these titles will be available in English. I also suspect that many of them are rare and may be difficult to locate. You'll want to read Ines of My Soul slowly because there isn't much out there of its equal. Savor it.
33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Allende's Best Novel,
By Notnadia (Currently upstairs.) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Ines of My Soul: A Novel (Hardcover)
In Inés of My Soul, Isabel Allende has written her finest novel, and I read it in one sitting, so impressed by it and so drawn into it was I. The lushness of her prose and her descriptive abilities have never been used in quite this way, and as Allende describes the virginal South American wilds, I was left in amazement at her accomplishment. I have always admired Allende as a writer, but I have been frustrated in the past at what I have seen as her unnecessary and detracting forays into the supernatural, which has intruded (as in House of the Spirits) into an otherwise rational plot. Nothing precisely like that comes to pass in this book, and insofar as it does, it seems less an affront in its setting here than it had at other times, and that also impressed me.
Inés of My Soul tells the story of a real life sixteenth-century figure, the bold and enterprising survivor, Doña Inés Suárez, who, along with her lover, the dashing Don Pedro de Valdivia, founds the great city of Santiago, Chile. Writing a remembrance from the vantage point of extreme old age (seventy years and near death) Doña Inés tells of growing up in Spain, then of course the world's most powerful and wealthy nation, and also describes to the reader her eventual voyage to Peru, in search of her husband, Juan, who had traveled to the New World before his wife, as one of Pizarro's conquistadors. Upon learning that her husband has died in battle (and finding that the man was not all she had once thought him to be) Doña Inés, left there in Peru with initially limited options, eventually is swept away by a dashing warrior and lover named Don Pedro de Valdivia. Together the pair go on to make the journey south to the wilds and are afterward remembered as among the founding figures in the modern nation of Chile. From her antiquity, Doña Inés tells the story of all this, and does so in a way that mesmerizes the imagination even as she---or more accurately Allende---teases the intellect and almost makes one forget until reminded of the human toll that was inextricably part of wedding together the distant lands of Chile and Spain. I found this to be an enjoyable and visually-powerful work of fiction. It impressed me in a number of ways, and I recommend it to those who admire this gifted South American writer, who feel drawn to its historical and geographical setting, or to anyone looking for a good read this season.
25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Well-imagined version of the Spanish conquest of Chile,
By Curmudgea (Georgia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Ines of My Soul: A Novel (Hardcover)
Although Allende deserves credit for resisting any impulse to impose modern sensibilities on her sixteenth-century protagonist, she doesn't succeed in creating in Ines a character I could understand or relate to. I realize Ines was a creature of her times, but many human feelings are universal across eras and cultures, and I needed help from the author to connect with Ines' dogged love for Juan (which seemed somewhat shallow), her religiosity, and her tolerance of -- and even participation in -- extreme cruelty and violence. The first-person narrative gives us the impression that she is a highly intelligent person, but it does not reflect a fully dimensional character. There is a tantalizing reference to her being intellectually mentored by a priest, but details of that relationship aren't there. I read through the novel mostly because it is a highly accessible narrative of the historical events as they probably occurred. It may be the enticement I needed to tackle Bernal Diaz' or William Prescott's histories of the conquest of Mexico and Peru. However, for a first-time Allende reader, who wants an un-put-downable historical novel I recomnmend instead her excellent Daughter of Fortune.
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