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 Allende creates fascinating ‘Portrait’ A Review By Suzanne Walsh Writer Isabel Allende contributes a new perspective on reality and the collective human experience with her novel “Portrait in Sepia.” Wwith the success of her novel “The House of Spirits,” Allende established herself as a writer creating within the genre of magical realism, a style capable of expressing the many different rich and wildly romantic aspects of South American culture. In “Portrait in Sepia,” Allende seems to have fine-tuned the reality that truth is often stranger than fiction. Gone are the devices used by Allende in “The House of Spirits” that served to take the reader away from reality only to bring them swiftly down again with beautifully woven tails of tragedy and perseverance. “Portrait in Sepia” contains all the beauty of her most famous work while guiding the reader with a capable and acute sense of story that never once breaks contract with the readers’ imagination. The novel tells the story of Aurora del Valle in a smooth but broken manner that calls to mind the true tragedy of memory loss. The reader is often given a sense of environment throughout the first half of the book but rarely a sense of place. The story begins with Aurora’s parents in 19th-century San Francisco, following Aurora herself from the moment of her conception through an ordeal that finds her living hundreds of miles away with her wealthy and prestigious grandmother Paulina del Valle in Chile. Although her new life in Chile gives Aurora opportunities she never would have had in San Francisco, Aurora is unable to fully come to terms with the holes in her memory that may solve the mystery to her reoccurring nightmares and overwhelming sense of abandonment. Although the characters in “Portrait in Sepia” are related to those in “The House of Spirits” by blood, there are few similarities in the treatment of their stories outside of the overwhelming talent of the author. Allende has succeeded in surpassing any one kind of literary genre to create a story that relies mainly on the rich observations of her own upbringing in Chile and the complexities of a finely crafted main character. To read the work of Allende is to appreciate work that likely will be presented to future generations as literary classics. Walsh is sales and marketing representative for Design Press. |
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