Allende's 'Violeta' recalls century of life

Isabel Allende packs 100 years’ worth of life, memory, love, passion, wisdom, and foolishness in her latest novel, “Violeta.”

Violeta Del Valle is born in 1920, the same year that the Spanish flu arrives in Chile, her home. In the 100 years of her life, she recalls the changes, disasters, and upheavals of the 20^th century as well as the births, deaths, marriages, and love affairs that punctuate her own story.

After Violeta’s overbearing and unethical father loses his fortune and takes his life, Violeta’s family “exiles” themselves to the far south of the country where they live without electricity or indoor plumbing on the farm of a family friend.

Violeta marries young and foolishly, and not long after falls in love and runs away with Julián Bravo, a gorgeous pilot. Despite his infidelities and criminal activities, Violeta stays with Julián for many years, having two children with him.

After a military coup that plunges her country into a brutal dictatorship and her activist son’s name appears on a wanted list, Violeta helps him escape the capital before he is “disappeared.”

Violeta, who always had a head for business and finds myriad ways to earn a very comfortable living, raises her grandson in the capital and is determined to do a better job with him than she did with her own children. However, she eventually finds that possessions are meaningless and that money is only worth the good you can do with it. At age 63, she describes herself as “reborn.”

Violeta’s change in direction is not the result of one huge event, but rather “the turns that we don’t notice in the moment they occur” (p 254). Her story is told by her 100-year-old self, full of the wisdom derived from decades of “stumbling down narrow, winding paths” (p 286) that take us from one day, one week, one year to the next.

Allende of course draws upon her own life to fill her novel with the people and events that fascinate the reader. Like Allende, Violeta survives earthquakes, patriarchy, and a cruel dictator. “Violeta” touches on themes present in many of Allende’s works. A friend and mentor tells Violeta, “Exert some independence; you’re not a little girl…You have to take care of yourself in this world” (p 99). And Violeta observes the difference in how the world treats men and women, writing “Julián…went wherever he pleased; he was free of blame, while I was the adulteress, the concubine, the wayward woman who dared to parade around pregnant by her lover” (p 137).

Allende has created another sweeping saga in “Violeta” that whisks the reader through the last century, offering readers fascinating and endearing characters. The world events in Violeta’s life may be familiar, but Allende presents them in a way that demonstrates the cyclical nature of history and offers a subtle warning about the present.