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The House of the Spirits
Isabel Allende, 1985
Bantam Books
433 pp.

In Brief
Chilean writer Isabel Allende's classic novel is both a symbolic family saga and the story of an unnamed Latin American country's turbulent history." Allende constructs a spirit-ridden world and fills it with colorful and all-too-human inhabitants. The Trueba family's passions, struggles, and secrets span three generations and a century of violent change, culminating in a crisis that brings the proud and tyrannical patriarch and his beloved granddaughter to opposite sides of the barricades. Against a backdrop of revolution and counterrevolution, Allende brings to life a family whose private bonds of love and hatred are more complex and enduring than the political allegiances that set them at odds. (From the publisher.)

(Much) More
The House of the Spirits is the magnificent epic of the Trueba family—their loves, their ambitions, their spiritual quests, their relations with one another, and their participation in the history of their times, a history that becomes a destiny and overtakes them all.

We begin—at the turn of the century, in an unnamed South American country—in the childhood home of the woman who will be the mother and grandmother of the clan, Clara Del Valle. A warm-hearted, hypersensitive girl, Clara has distinguished herself from an early age with her telepathic abilities—she can read fortunes, make objects move as if they had lives of their own, and predict the future. Following the mysterious death of her sister, the fabled Rosa the Beautiful, Clara has been mute for nine years. When she breaks her silence, it is to announce that she will be married soon.

Her husband-to-be is Esteban Trueba, a stern, willful man, given to fits of rage and haunted by a profound loneliness. At the age of 35, he has returned to the capital from his country estate to visit his dying mother and to find a wife. (He was Rosa's fiance, and her death has marked him as deeply as it has Clara.) This is the man Clara has foreseen—has summoned—to be her husband; Esteban, in turn, will conceive a passion for Clara that will last the rest of his long and rancorous life.

We go with this couple as they move into the extravagant house he builds for her, a structure that everyone calls "the big house on the corner," which is soon populated with Clara's spiritualist friends, the artists she sponsors, the charity cases she takes an interest in, with Esteban's political cronies, and, above all, with the Trueba children ...their daughter, Blanca, a practical self0-effacing girl who will, to the fury of her father, form a lifelong liaison with the son of his foreman...the twins, Jaime and Nicolas, the former a solitary, taciturn boy who becomes a doctor to the poor and unfortunate; the latter a playboy, a dabbler in Eastern religions and mystical disciplines...and, in the third generation, the child Alba, Blanca's daughter, who is fondled and indulged and instructed by them all.

For all their good fortunate, their natural (and supernatural) talents, and their powerful attachments to one another, the inhabitants of the "big house on the corner" are not immune to the larger forces of the world. And as the 20th century beats on...as Esteban becomes more strident in his opposition to Communism...as Jaime becomes the friend and confidant of the Socialist leader known as the Candidate...as Alba falls in love with a student radical...the Truebas become actors—and victims—in a series of events that gives The House of the Spirits a deeper resonance and meaning. (From the cover flap of the first edition.)

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About the Author

• Birth—August 02, 1942
• Where—Lima, Peru
• Education—private schools in Bolivia and Lebanon
• Awards—Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, 1998; Sara Lee
   Foundation Award, 1998; WILLA Literary Award, 2000
• Currently—lives in San Rafael, California, USA


Born in Peru and raised in Chile, Isabel Allende is the author of eight novels, including, The House of the Spirits, Ines of My Soul, Zorro, Daughter of Fortune, Eva Luna, and Portrait in Sepia and. She has also written a collection of stories; three memoirs, including My Invented Country and Paula; and a trilogy of children's novels. Her books have been translated into more than twenty-seven languages and have become bestsellers across four continents. In 2004 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Isabel Allende lives in California.

In Isabel Allende's books, human beings do not exist merely in the three-dimensional sense. They can exert themselves as memory, as destiny, as spirits without form, as fairy tales. Just as the more mystical elements of Allende's past have shaped her work, so has the hard-bitten reality. Working as a journalist in Chile, Allende was forced to flee the country with her family after her uncle, President Salvador Allende, was killed in a coup in 1973.

Out of letters to family back in Chile came the manuscript that was to become Allende’s first novel. Her arrival on the publishing scene in 1985 with The House of the Spirits was instantly recognized as a literary event. The New York Times called it "a unique achievement, both personal witness and possible allegory of the past, present and future of Latin America."

To read a book by Allende is to believe in (or be persuaded of) the power of transcendence, spiritual and otherwise. Her characters are often what she calls "marginal," those who strive to live on the fringes of society. It may be someone like Of Love and Shadows 's Hipolito Ranquileo, who makes his living as a circus clown; or Eva Luna, a poor orphan who is the center of two Allende books (Eva Luna and The Stories of Eva Luna).

Allende's characters have in common an inner fortitude that proves stronger than their adversity, and a sense of lineage that propels them both forward and backward. When you meet a central character in an Allende novel, be prepared to meet a few generations of his or her family. This multigenerational thread drives The House of the Spirits, the tale of the South American Trueba family. Not only did the novel draw Allende critical accolades (with such breathless raves as "spectacular," "astonishing" and "mesmerizing" from major reviewers), it landed her firmly in the magic realist tradition of predecessor (and acknowledged influence) Gabriel García Márquez. Some of its characters also reappeared in the historical novels Portrait in Sepia and Daughter of Fortune.

"It's strange that my work has been classified as magic realism," Allende has said, "because I see my novels as just being realistic literature." Indeed, much of what might be considered "magic" to others is real to Allende, who based the character Clara del Valle in The House of the Spirits on her own reputedly clairvoyant grandmother. And she has drawn as well upon the political violence that visited her life: Of Love and Shadows (1987) centers on a political crime in Chile, and other Allende books allude to the ideological divisions that affected the author so critically.

But all of her other work was "rehearsal," says Allende, for what she considers her most difficult and personal book. Paula is written for Allende's daughter, who died in 1992 after several months in a coma. Like Allende's fiction, it tells Paula's story through that of Allende's own and of her relatives. Allende again departed from fiction in Aphrodite, a book that pays homage to the romantic powers of food (complete with recipes for two such as "Reconciliation Soup"). The book's lighthearted subject matter had to have been a necessity for Allende, who could not write for nearly three years after the draining experience of writing Paula.

Whichever side of reality she is on, Allende's voice is unfailingly romantic and life-affirming, creating mystery even as she uncloaks it. Like a character in Of Love and Shadows, Allende tells "stories of her own invention whose aim [is] to ease suffering and make time pass more quickly," and she succeeds.

Extras
Allende has said that the character of Gregory Reeves in The Infinite Plan is based on her husband, Willie Gordon.

Allende begins all of her books on January 8, which she considers lucky because it was the day she began writing a letter to her dying grandfather that later became The House of the Spirits.

She began her career as a journalist, editing the magazine Paula and later contributing to the Venezuelan paper El Nacional. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)

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Critics Say. . .
I'd forgotten how much I like this book—having just re-read it after 18 years. The three generations of women who populate the story and the eponymous house of spirits make fascinating and compelling characters. It's very much a feminist work as we watch three women.... read more.
A LitLovers LitPick - Feb 08


Extraordinary...powerful...sharply observant, witty and eloquent.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt - The New York Times


The only cause the House of the Spirits embraces is that of humanity, and it does so with such passion, humor, and wisdom that in the end it transends politics....The result is a novel of force and charm, spaciousness and vigor.
Jonathan Yardley - The Washington Post


Book Club Discussion Questions
Sorry, house is empty. No questions have been made available by the publishers for this book.

But don't despair. Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

   • Generic Book Discussion Questions
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Also consider these discussion points:

1. Rosa dies early in the book. Her green hair and unearthly beauty engender comparisons to mermaids. What symbolic meaning does she carry—and why, at the end, is her body still intact? Figure that one out!

2. The names of the other three women, Clara, Blanca, and Alba refer to white, or the lack of color—while Rosa's name refers to red. Any ideas?

3. You might explore the dichotomy between Esteban and Clara: one a hard materialist, the other a spiritualist (similar to what E.M Forster does in Howards End). Is Allende perhaps commenting on the dual aspects of human life...the need to incorporate both approaches in our lives?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)