In Isabel Allende’s latest novel, Violeta, the eponymous protagonist is born at the time of the Spanish Flu in 1920 and dies during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Her final thought: “It is a strange symmetry that I was born in one pandemic and will die during another.”
Allende starts the book with the Spanish Flu which “brought first a terrible chill from beyond the grave, which nothing could quell, followed by fevered shivering, a pounding headache, a blazing fire behind the eyes and in the throat, and deliriums, with terrifying hallucinations of death lurking steps away. The person’s skin turned a purplish-blue colour that soon darkened until the feet and hands were black; a cough impeded breathing as a bloody foam flooded the lungs, the victim moaned and writhed in agony, and the end arrived by asphyxiation. The most fortunate ones were dead in just a few hours”.
The Chilean government responded to the crisis with “a stay-at-home order to curb the spread, but since no one heeded it, the president decreed a state of emergency, a nightly curfew, and a ban on free circulation of the civil population without due cause, under penalty of fine, arrest, and, in many cases, beatings. Schools were closed, as well as shops, parks and other places where people typically congregated.”
In her 100 years of life, Violeta witnesses extraordinary events and historical changes in the world, in her native country Chile and in her personal life. The Great Depression causes bankruptcy of her father’s business and he commits suicide. The family, evicted from their large mansion in the capital city Santiago, moves to Nahuel, the remote Patagonian part of the country in the south “a landscape of vast cold forests, snowy volcanoes, emerald lakes and raging rivers”.
Violeta comes of age surviving and working in the primitive and tough conditions of the rural life among the native Mapuche Indians. She learns to fish, trap rabbits, milk cows, saddle a horse, smoke cheeses, meats, fish and hams in the circular mud hut where a pile of embers perpetually glowed. When she was fourteen, the local Mapuche Indian chief asks for her hand in marriage, either for himself or one of his sons. He offers his best horse as payment for the bride.
The major event that upends her life and leaves a scar in the country’s history is the violent overthrow of the socialist president Allende by the military coup in 1973. Her son, a leftist militant student, escapes to Argentina and eventually gets asylum in Norway. Some of her relatives and friends are killed, tortured and jailed by the regime. Her second husband, a pilot with private aircraft, makes money by collaborating with the military regime and the CIA. Her daughter dies of drug addiction in the United States. Her grandson Camilo, a rebellious young man, decides to become a priest and devotes himself to the service of the poor.
Allende has narrated the story of Violeta as a series of letters to her grandson Camilo, in which the 100-year-old grandmother wants to leave a testimony of her life.
Allende had conceived her first novel House of Spirits (1982) when she received news that her 100-year-old grandfather was dying. She began to write him a letter that ultimately became the manuscript of the novel. It was influenced by Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.
The only difference between her first novel and the latest is that magical realism is now missing. The story of Violeta is narrated without fantasies and fables, miracles and mysteries.
Allende said in an interview, “All fiction is ultimately autobiographical. I write about love and violence, about death and redemption, about strong women and absent fathers, about survival. My life is about pain, loss, love and memory. Most of my characters are outsiders, people who are not sheltered by society, who are unconventional, irreverent, defiant. Struggle, loss, confusion, memory—these are the raw materials of my writing.”
These are clearly evident in the story of Violeta who is a strong independent woman who defies the matriarchal Chilean society of the first half of the 20th century and goes through three marriages.
This is similar to the real-life story of Allende, who has also married three times, the last one at the ripe age of 77 in 2019 with a New York lawyer Roger Cukras, of the same age.
Violeta’s experience of turbulence, exile and grief are not much different from Allende’s real-life suffering, as she had to go into exile to Venezuela during the Chilean military regime. Violeta’s grief over the death of her young daughter is similar to the untimely death of Allende’s own daughter Paula at the age of 29. Allende’s novel Paula is based on the life story of her own daughter.
I have read most of Isabel Allende’s books and enjoyed her epic storytelling. Reading her books is like taking a long journey filled with poignant moments and recollections of memories.
I like and admire even more Allende’s own life story of adventures and romance. She describes her personal life with fantastic wit and self-deprecating humour. She had suffered terrible personal tragedies from which she has come out with her strong-willed spirit. Even now at her advanced age of 80 years, she lives a free-spirited California life with a full-blooded Chilean passion.
Allende has certainly enriched the world of literature with more than 20 memorable books which have been translated into 40 languages and sold over 70 million copies. I believe that she is due for a Nobel Prize.
The author is an expert in Latin American affairs.
