Island Beneath the Sea
Isabel Allende, 2010
HarperCollins
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061988240
Summary
Born a slave on the island of Saint-Domingue, Zarite—known as Tete—is the daughter of an African mother she never knew and one of the white sailors who brought her into bondage. Though her childhood is one of brutality and fear, Tete finds solace in the traditional rhythms of African drums and in the voodoo loas she discovers through her fellow slaves.
When twenty-year-old Toulouse Valmorain arrives on the island in 1770, it’s with powdered wigs in his baggage and dreams of financial success in his mind. But running his father’s plantation, Saint Lazare, is neither glamorous nor easy. It will be eight years before he brings home a bride—but marriage, too, proves more difficult than he imagined. And Valmorain remains dependent on the services of his teenaged slave.
Spanning four decades, Island Beneath the Sea is the moving story of the intertwined lives of Tete and Valmorain, and of one woman’s determination to find love amid loss, to offer humanity though her own has been battered, and to forge her own identity in the cruellest of circumstances. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 2, 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
Isabel Allende is a Chilean writer whose works sometimes contain aspects of the "magic realist" tradition. Author of more than 20 books—essay collections, memoirs, and novels, she is perhaps best known for her novels The House of the Spirits (1982), Daughter of Fortune (1999), and Ines of My Soul (2006). She has been called "the world's most widely read Spanish-language author." All told her novels have been translated from Spanish into over 30 languages and have sold more than 55 million copies.
Her novels are often based upon her personal experience and pay homage to the lives of women, while weaving together elements of myth and realism. She has lectured and toured many American colleges to teach literature. Fluent in English as a second language, Allende was granted American citizenship in 2003, having lived in California with her American husband since 1989.
Early background
Allende was born Isabel Allende Llona in Lima, Peru, the daughter of Francisca Llona Barros and Tomas Allende, who was at the time the Chilean ambassador to Peru. Her father was a first cousin of Salvador Allende, President of Chile from 1970 to 1973, making Salvador her first cousin once removed (not her uncle as he is sometimes referred to).
In 1945, after her father had disappeared, Isabel's mother relocated with her three children to Santiago, Chile, where they lived until 1953. Allende's mother married diplomat Ramon Huidobro, and from 1953-1958 the family moved often, including to Bolivia and Beirut. In Bolivia, Allende attended a North American private school; in Beirut, she attended an English private school. The family returned to Chile in 1958, where Allende was briefly home-schooled. In her youth, she read widely, particularly the works of William Shakespeare.
From 1959 to 1965, while living in Chile, Allende finished her secondary studies. She married Miguel Frias in 1962; the couple's daughter Paula was born in 1963 and their son Nicholas in 1966. During that time Allende worked with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Santiago, Chile, then in Brussels, Belgium, and elsewhere in Europe.
Returning to Chile in 1996, Allende translated romance novels (including those of Barbara Cartland) from English to Spanish but was fired for making unauthorized changes to the dialogue in order to make the heriones sound more intelligent. She also altered the Cinderella endings, letting the heroines find more independence.
In 1967 Allende joined the editorial staff for Paula magazine and in 1969 the children's magazine Mampato, where she later became editor. She published two children's stories, Grandmother Panchita and Lauchas y Lauchones, as well as a collection of articles, Civilice a Su Troglodita.
She also worked in Chilean television from 1970-1974. As a journalist, she interviewed famed Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Neruda told Allende that she had too much imagination to be a journalist and that she should become a novelist. He also advised her to compile her satirical columns in book form—which she did and which became her first published book. In 1973, Allende's play El Embajador played in Santiago, a few months before she was forced to flee the country due to the coup.
The military coup in September 1973 brought Augusto Pinochet to power and changed everything for Allende. Her mother and diplotmat stepfather narrowly escaped assassination, and she herself began receiving death threats. In 1973 Allende fled to Venezuela.
Life after Chile
Allende remained in exile in Venezuela for 13 years, working as a columnist for El Nacional, a major newspaper. On a 1988 visit to California, she met her second husband, attorney Willie Gordon, with whom she now lives in San Rafael, California. Her son Nicolas and his children live nearby.
In 1992 Allende's daughter Paula died at the age of 28, the result of an error in medication while hospitalized for porphyria (a rarely fatal metabolic disease). To honor her daughter, Allenda started the Isabel Allende Foundation in 1996. The foundation is "dedicated to supporting programs that promote and preserve the fundamental rights of women and children to be empowered and protected."
In 1994, Allende was awarded the Gabriela Mistral Order of Merit—the first woman to receive this honor.
She was granted U.S. citizenship in 2003 and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004. She was one of the eight flag bearers at the Opening Ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.
In 2008 Allende received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from San Francisco State University for her "distinguished contributions as a literary artist and humanitarian." In 2010 she received Chile's National Literature Prize.
Writing
In 1981, during her exile, Allende received a phone call that her 99-year-old grandfather was near death. She sat down to write him a letter wishing to "keep him alive, at least in spirit." Her letter evolved into The House of the Spirits—the intent of which was to exorcise the ghosts of the Pinochet dictatorship. Although rejected by numerous Latin American publishers, the novel was finally published in Spain, running more than two dozen editions in Spanish and a score of translations. It was an immense success.
Allende has since become known for her vivid storytelling. As a writer, she holds to a methodical literary routine, working Monday through Saturday, 9:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. "I always start on 8 January,"Allende once said, a tradition that began with the letter to her dying grandfather.
Her 1995 book Paula recalls Allende's own childhood in Santiago, Chile, and the following years she spent in exile. It is written as an anguished letter to her daughter. The memoir is as much a celebration of Allende's turbulent life as it is the chronicle of Paula's death.
Her 2008 memoir The Sum of Our Days centers on her recent life with her immediate family—her son, second husband, and grandchildren. The Island Beneath the Sea, set in New Orleans, was published in 2010. Maya's Notebook, a novel alternating between Berkeley, California, and Chiloe, an island in Chile, was published in 2011 (2013 in the U.S.). Three movies have been based on her novels—Aphrodite, Eva Luna, and Gift for a Sweetheart. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/23/2013.)
Book Reviews
Allende brings women to the forefront of the story of the rebellion.... Ultimately, however, Allende has traded innovative language and technique for a fundamentally straightforward historical pageant. There is plenty of melodrama and coincidence in Island Beneath the Sea, but not much magic.
Gaiutra Bahadur - New York Times Book Review
Exuberant passions, strong heroines and intricate plots...a world as enchanted—and enchanting—as it is brutal and unjust.... A page-turning drama.
San Francisco Chronicle
A remarkable feat of prescience…Island Beneath the Sea is rich in drama, setting, themes, characters, dialogue and symbolism…. An intriguing and wonderfully woven story.
San Antonio Express-News
Epic scope and sweep…[Allende’s] characters, linked by blood, love triangles and even incest, have a depth and complexity that…imbues the proceedings with a lushness bordering on magic realism.
Associated Press
[With] gorgeous place descriptions, a keen eye for history and a predilection for high drama…. There are few more charming storytellers in the world than Isabel Allende.
National Public Radio.org
Of the many pitfalls lurking for the historical novel, the most dangerous is history itself. The best writers either warp it for selfish purposes (Gore Vidal), dig for the untold, interior history (Toni Morrison), or both (Jeannette Winterson). Allende, four years after Ines of My Soul, returns with another historical novel, one that soaks up so much past life that there is nowhere left to go but where countless have been. Opening in Saint Domingue a few years before the Haitian revolution would tear it apart, the story has at its center Zarite, a mulatto whose extraordinary life takes her from that blood-soaked island to dangerous and freewheeling New Orleans; from rural slave life to urban Creole life and a different kind of cruelty and adventure. Yet even in the new city, Zarite can't quite free herself from the island, and the people alive and dead that have followed her. Zarite's passages are striking. More than merely lyrical, they map around rhythms and spirits, making her as much conduit as storyteller. One wishes there was more of her because, unlike Allende, Zarite is under no mission to show us how much she knows. Every instance, a brush with a faith healer, for example, is an opportunity for Allende to showcase what she has learned about voodoo, medicine, European and Caribbean history, Napoleon, the Jamaican slave Boukman, and the legendary Mackandal, a runaway slave and master of black magic who has appeared in several novels including Alejo Carpentier's Kingdom of This World. The effect of such display of research is a novel that is as inert as a history textbook, much like, oddly enough John Updike's Terrorist, a novel that revealed an author who studied a voluminous amount of facts without learning a single truth. Slavery as a subject in fiction is still a high-wire act, but one expects more from Allende. Too often she forgoes the restraint and empathy essential for such a topic and plunges into a heavy breathing prose reminiscent of the Falconhurst novels of the 1970s, but without the guilty pleasure of sexual taboo. Sex, overwritten and undercooked, is where opulent hips slithered like a knowing snake until she impaled herself upon his rock-hard member with a deep sigh of joy. Even the references to African spirituality seem skin-deep and perfunctory, revealing yet another writer too entranced by the myth of black cultural primitivism to see the brainpower behind it. With Ines of My Soul one had the sense that the author was trying to structure a story around facts, dates, incidents, and real people. Here it is the reverse, resulting in a book one second-guesses at every turn. Of course there will be a forbidden love. Betrayal. Incest. Heartbreak. Insanity. Violence. And in the end the island in the novel's title remains legend. Fittingly so, because to reach the Island Beneath the Sea, one would have had to dive deep. Allende barely skims the surface.
Publishers Weekly
Zarieté, known as Tete, is born a slave in Haiti, then called Saint-Domingue, in 1700. She is bought by Toulouse Valmorain, a young Frenchman whose ideals quickly disappear in the brutality of life on a sugar plantation. Tete tenderly cares for Valmorain's son and, since she is her master's property, bears two of the master's children herself. She helps Valmorain and the children escape just as the bloody violence of the slave revolt reaches the plantation. They set sail for New Orleans, a raucous city where Tete finds more family drama and, finally, love and freedom. Verdict: Confining Allende's trademark magic realism to the otherworldly solace Tete finds in the island's voodoo, this timely and absorbing novel is another winning Allende story filled with adventure, vivid characters, and richly detailed descriptions of life in the Caribbean at that time. Sure to be popular with Allende's many fans. —Leslie Patterson, Brown Univ. Lib., Providence
Library Journal
In a many-faceted plot, Allende animates irresistible characters authentic in their emotional turmoil and pragmatic adaptability.... Allende is grace incarnate in her evocations of the spiritual energy that still sustains the beleaguered people of Haiti and New Orleans. Demand will be high for this transporting, remarkably topical novel of men and women of courage risking all for liberty. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
Given recent events, the timing couldn't be better for this historical fiction from Allende, which follows a slave/concubine from Haiti during the slave uprisings to New Orleans in time for the Louisiana Purchase. In 1770, Toulouse Valmorain arrives in Haiti from France to take over his dying father's plantation. He buys the child Zarite to be his new Spanish wife Eugenia's maidservant and has her trained by the mulatto courtesan Violette Boisier, whose charisma could carry a book on its own. Barely into puberty, Zarite is raped by Valmorain, who gives the resulting son to Violette and her French army officer husband to raise as their own. Eugenia bears Valmorain one legitimate heir before she descends into madness. Zarite, who is devoted to pathetic Eugenia until her early death, lovingly raises baby Maurice and runs the household with great competence. She also submits to sexual relations with Valmorain whenever he wants. When Zarite's daughter is born, Valmorain assumes the child Rosette is his and allows her to remain in the household as Maurice's playmate. Actually Rosette's father is Gambo, a slave who has joined the rebels and become a lieutenant to the legendary Toussaint Louverture. When the rebels destroy Valmorain's plantation, Gambo and Zarite help him escape. In return Valmorain promises to free Zarite, who stays with him, she thinks temporarily, for the children's sake. Valmorain relocates to Louisiana, where Eugenia's brother has purchased him land. His new wife, jealous and vindictive Hortense, makes life unbearable for both Zarite and Maurice, who is sent to school in Boston. While Valmorain, less a villain than a man of his time, finally grants Zarite the freedom he's promised, more tragedies await strong-willed Rosette and sensitive, idealistic Maurice, whose love crosses more than racial boundaries. Still Zarite, along with the reader, finds solace in the cast of secondary characters, who also journey from Haiti to New Orleans. A rich gumbo of melodrama, romance and violence.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Island Beneath the Sea:
1. The story of this novel is steeped in historical events, yet it centers around the fictional slave girl, Zarite. How would you describe her? Zarete, for instance, demonstrates an indomitable strength of character yet at the same time submits passivly to Valmorain at his asking.
2. Tete describes her "island beneath the sea" as a paradise where "rhythm is born...it shakes the earth, it cuts through me like a lightning bolt and rises toward the sky...." What does Tete mean? What is the thematic significance of her island to this novel?
3. How would you describe Toulouise Valmorain. Is he a monstrous villain...or is he a more complicated individual, forced to subvert his ideals to the pressures of plantation life?
4. Aside from master/slave, what are the complications in the relationship between Valmorain and Tete? In what ways are the two dependent upon one another?
5. What insights into the conditions of slavery does this book provide?
6. Some readers/reviewers have criticized this novel as melodramatic (excessive prose style, stereotypical characters (all good or all evil), sex-drenched scenes, disaster-prone plot). Others see the the work as an exciting, complex portrait of history and characters. Where do you stand?
7. Talk about the role of Voodoo in this work. What is the loa...and who is Erzulie, a name that becomes a refrain throughout the book? What does she represent? Voodo continues to exists today—how you account for its power and endurance? Also, talk about how the two faiths, Voodoo and Christianity, occasionally mingle in this book.
8. How does Allende depict the life and culture of the wealthy French who control the island of Saint-Dominque before the rebellion?
9. How well does Allende combine historical events with her fictional narrative? Some believe her overlaying of history onto the story is clumsy; others say the history is beautifully interwoven. What is your opinionl...and can you point to examples that support your views?
10. Talk about New Orleans section of the novel. How different is life there from Saint Dominique?
11. This book is particularly rich in secondary characters— Violette, Etienne Rilais, Gambo, Tante Rose, Permentier. Which ones do you find most interesting...or sympathetic?
12. Does this book end on a note of hope...or despair? In what way is the second generation a window on the future?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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