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Summary
Summary
Born into a poor family in Spain, Inés, a seamstress, finds herself condemned to a life of hard work without reward or hope for the future. It is the sixteenth century, the beginning of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, and when her shiftless husband disappears to the New World, Inés uses the opportunity to search for him as an excuse to flee her stifling homeland and seek adventure. After her treacherous journey takes her to Peru, she learns that her husband has died in battle. Soon she begins a fiery love affair with a man who will change the course of her life: Pedro de Valdivia, war hero and field marshal to the famed Francisco Pizarro.
Author Notes
Isabel Allende was born in 1942 in Lima, Peru, the daughter of a Chilean diplomat. When her parents separated, young Isabel moved with her mother to Chile, where she spent the rest of her childhood. She married at the age of 19 and had two children, Paula and Nicolas. Her uncle was Salvador Allende, the president of Chile. When he was overthrown in the coup of 1973, she fled Chile, moving to Caracas, Venezuela.
While living in Venezuela, Allende began writing her novels, many of them exploring the close family bonds between women. Her first novel, The House of the Spirits, has been translated into 27 languages, and was later made into a film. She then wrote Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, and The Stories of Eva Luna, all set in Latin America. The Infinite Plan was her first novel to take place in the United States. She explores the issues of human rights and the plight of immigrants and refugees in her novel, In The Midst of Winter. In Paula, Allende wrote her memoirs in connection with her daughter's illness and death. She delved into the erotic connections between food and love in Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses.
In addition to writing books, Allende has worked as a TV interviewer, magazine writer, school administrator, and a secretary at a U.N. office in Chile. She received the 1996 Harold Washington Literacy Award. She lives in California. Her title Maya's Notebook made The New York Times Best Seller List in 2013.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
New York Review of Books Review
A WORK of historical fiction couldn't ask for better bones than the adventures of a real-life conquistadora. The heroine of Isabel Allende's latest book, a 16th-century Spanish woman who sailed to Peru and trekked south with the expedition that claimed vast lands for Charles V, faces the same perils as the soldiers around her - along with a few extras, like unwanted sexual advances. Not that Inés Suárez rejects them all: Pedro de Valdivia, the leader of the expedition, is her lover and partner in the founding of Santiago de la Nueva Extremadura, the first Spanish stronghold in Chile. This conquistador, whose wife initially remained in Spain, regularly seeks his lover's counsel. "I did not have enough hours to do everything," Inés, the ultimate multitasker, complains: "taking care of my house and the colony, looking after the sick, the plantings and the animal pens, along with my reading lessons." In Margaret Sayers Peden's translation of "Inés of My Soul," Allende's reach is broad, scooping up politics, history, romance and the supernatural. "This novel is a work of intuition, but any similarity to events and persons relating to the conquest of Chile is not coincidental," she writes in an author's note. This is a neat twist on a familiar phrase, but it hints at a problem. Too often Allende's book reads as if she is assembling a plot around places, dates and historical figures. Slow to start, the narrative acquires an events-driven tunnel vision that can get in the way of character development. At a time when the strong arm of the Spanish Inquisition reached clear to the southern tip of the New World, Valdivia's mission was to find riches in Chile while conquering and converting the indigenous population. In Allende's rendering, Inés has a sensitive view of the local people: "They are my enemies," she notes of the Mapuche Indians, "but I admire them because I know that if I were in their place, I would die fighting for my land, as they are doing." Despite this, Inés is a crucial actor in the brutality of the Spanish conquest, at one point decapitating prisoners and throwing their heads outside the walls of the fledgling colony. Not terribly conflicted by the part she must play, she seems beyond reproach, as effective and inscrutable in battle as she is as a gobernadora. As if that weren't enough, she has two almost impossibly valuable attributes: she's been born with the gift of dousing, which means she can find water anywhere, and she never becomes pregnant. Allende uses the backdrop of constant violence to weigh in on the politics of domination and intimidation. Is it just a coincidence that the date given for the biggest, bloodiest battle in Santiago is Sept. 11? Or that, on the very same day in 1973, Salvador Allende (the author's uncle, then the president of Chile) was assassinated and his government overthrown in a military coup? "I fear that these pages already contain more cruelty than a Christian soul can tolerate," Inés notes. "In the New World, no one has scruples when the moment calls for violence. But what am I saying? Violence ... exists everywhere, and has throughout the ages. Nothing changes; we humans repeat the same sins over and over, eternally." What stays with the reader, after the treks and battles and politics fade, aren't Allende's political musings or even her characters. Instead it's her vivid descriptions of daily life in 16th-century South America: the meager soups that starving settlers season with mice, lizards, crickets and worms; the marriage rituals of the Mapuche, in which a man "steals the girl he desires"; an attack in which the right hands and noses of Mapuche prisoners are removed with hatchets and knives. In "Inés of My Soul," Allende succeeds in resurrecting a woman from history and endowing her with the gravitas of a hero. But as a work of fiction, her portrait of Inés is hit-and-miss. Maggie Galehouse is a reporter for The Houston Chronicle.
Guardian Review
Isabel Allende's early fiction, particularly The House of the Spirits and Eva Luna , had an emotional warmth about it that readers found hugely compelling. Together with the fey twists and turns of magical realism - which you either love or you loathe - her ebullient inventiveness led inevitably to comparisons with Garcia Marquez. Some of her latest work, however, has not been so successful, and for me, this novel dips to a new low. Here, Allende is working with historical reconstruction, and perhaps it is the constraints being laid on her imagination that make this such a lumpy, indigestible read. I'm not qualified to say how far this tale of the 16th- century consort of Pedro de Valdivia, conqueror of Chile, accords to the historical record, but I'd guess that it stays pretty close. Yet although dates, names and battles may be in place, the work of bringing the events to life has eluded Allende. The Ines Suarez who narrates the book is not a person, but simply a cloak of rhetoric thrown over a series of historical happenings, and her almost supernatural abilities - to seduce, cook, heal, dowse for water - while never actually magical, are never actually convincing either. There are three love stories that define Ines's life; the first with her husband Juan, a sexy good-for-nothing; the second with her lover Pedro de Valdivia, the conquering hero; and the last with her second husband, Rodrigo de Quiroga, a cardboard Mr Right. Yet they are all equally unrealised, with the most Barbara Cartlandish swoonings reserved for Ines's time with Pedro: "Those two days went by in a sigh, as we told each other our pasts and made love in a blazing whirlwind, a giving that was never enough. . ." But the rhetoric is flimsy. When Pedro leaves her, she says: "My heart was broken, and I would have to live thirty years more with the damage", yet just a few pages later she is proposing to Rodrigo. "How could I in less than a minute go from the sadness of having been abandoned to the joy of being loved? I must have been very fickle." You could say that an awful lot happens in this book, particularly when Ines is following Pedro through South America on his mission to conquer Chile, and we get into one battle after another. Yet on another level, nothing happens - nobody learns anything, nothing is ever at stake emotionally. The battles themselves are as cliched as the love scenes, with blade on flesh substituting for flesh on flesh: "I lifted the heavy sword in both hands and swung it with all the strength of my hatred . . . The force of the swing threw me to my knees, where gushing blood hit my face as a head rolled on the ground before me." We see everything through Ines's eyes, and the novel is presented as her memoirs, written as she nears death. But it is impossible to say what the conquest of Chile and the founding of Santiago mean to her. We don't see any loss of illusion, merely a rat-tat-tat of cruelty on each side. On the last page, Ines seems to be filled with remorse for the suffering she and the other Spaniards caused: "Horrendous images passed before my eyes like a nightmare I could not wake from. I thought I saw baskets filled with amputated hands . . ." But because she has recounted these cruelties and abuses with such apparent relish, it is hard to know how seriously to take this final sense of horror. I got the sense that Allende hasn't quite decided how seriously to take Ines herself, and that this is one reason why the book fails to get beyond pastiche. Natasha Walter's The New Feminism is published by Virago. To order Ines of My Soul for pounds 16.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875 or go to guardian.co.uk/ bookshop Caption: article-allende.1 There are three love stories that define [Ines Suarez]'s life; the first with her husband Juan, a sexy good-for-nothing; the second with her lover [Pedro de Valdivia], the conquering hero; and the last with her second husband, Rodrigo de Quiroga, a cardboard Mr Right. Yet they are all equally unrealised, with the most Barbara Cartlandish swoonings reserved for Ines's time with Pedro: "Those two days went by in a sigh, as we told each other our pasts and made love in a blazing whirlwind, a giving that was never enough. . ." But the rhetoric is flimsy. When Pedro leaves her, she says: "My heart was broken, and I would have to live thirty years more with the damage", yet just a few pages later she is proposing to Rodrigo. "How could I in less than a minute go from the sadness of having been abandoned to the joy of being loved? I must have been very fickle." - Natasha Walter.
Library Journal Review
Allende's newest novel is both well--researched historical fiction and intuitively realized magic as she explores the brutal 16th-century colonization by the Spanish Conquistadores-from a totally female perspective. This epic war story is filled with battles of the heart as well as for riches, as the heroine evolves from an abandoned seamstress in Spain to a daring warrior in the difficult creation of the nation of Chile. Ines Su rez finds her match in Pedro de Valdivia, a major force in Francisco Pizarro's army, and transcends his story within the descriptive skills of the author, who takes documented facts and telescopes them into a believable tale. Blair Brown ably handles the accents and quiet certitude of Ines. This timely book, in this century's growing realization of feminine political power, is highly recommended.-Joyce Kessel, Villa Maria Coll., Buffalo, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Ines of My Soul A Novel Chapter One Europe 1500-1537 I am Inés Suárez, a townswoman of the loyal city of Santiago de Nueva Extremadura in the Kingdom of Chile, writing in the year of Our Lord 1580. I am not sure of the exact date of my birth, but according to my mother I was born following the famine and deadly plague that ravaged Spain upon the death of Philip the Handsome. I do not believe that the death of the king provoked the plague, as people said as they watched the progress of the funeral cortège, which left the odor of bitter almonds floating in the air for days, but one never knows. Queen Juana, still young and beautiful, traveled across Castile for more than two years, carrying her husband's catafalque from one side of the country to the other, opening it from time to time to kiss her husband's lips, hoping that he would revive. Despite the embalmer's emollients, The Handsome stank. When I came into the world, the unlucky queen, by then royally insane, was secluded in the palace at Tordesillas with the corpse of her consort. That means that my heart has beaten for at least seventy winters, and that I am destined to die before this Christmas. I could say that a Gypsy on the shores of the Río Jerte divined the date of my death, but that would be one of those untruths one reads in a book and then, because it is in print, appears to be true. All the Gypsy did was predict a long life for me, which they always do in return for a coin. It is my reckless heart that tells me that the end is near. I always knew that I would die an old woman, in peace and in my bed, like all the women of my family. That is why I never hesitated to confront danger, since no one is carried off to the other world before the appointed hour. "You will be dying a little old woman, I tell you, señorayyy," Catalina would reassure me--her pleasant Peruvian Spanish trailing out the word-when the obstinate galloping hoof beats I felt in my chest drove me to the ground. I have forgotten Catalina's Quechua name, and now it is too late to ask because I buried her in the patio of my house many years ago, but I have absolute faith in the precision and veracity of her prophecies. Catalina entered my service in the ancient city of Cuzco, the jewel of the Incas, during the era of Francisco Pizarro, that fearless bastard who, if one listens to loose tongues, once herded pigs in Spain and ended up as the Marqués Gobernador of Peru, crushed by his ambition and multiple betrayals. Such are the ironies of this new world of the Americas, where traditional laws have no bearing, and society is completely scrambled: saints and sinners, Whites, Blacks, Browns, Indians, Mestizos, nobles, and peasants. Any one among us can find himself in chains, branded with red-hot iron, and the next day be elevated by a turn of fortune. I have lived more than forty years in the New World and still I am not accustomed to the lack of order, though I myself have benefited from it. Had I stayed in the town of my birth I would today be an old, old woman, poor, and blind from tatting so much lace by the light of a candle. There I would be Inés, the seamstress on the street of the aqueduct. Here I am doña Inés Suárez, a highly placed señora, widow of The Most Excellent Gobernador don Rodrigo de Quiroga, conquistador and founder of the Kingdom of Chile. So, I am at least seventy years old, as I was saying, years well-lived, but my soul and my heart, still caught in a fissure of my youth, wonder what devilish thing has happened to my body. When I look at myself in my silver mirror, Rodrigo's first gift to me when we were wed, I do not recognize the grandmother with a crown of white hair who looks back at me. Who is that person mocking the true Inés? I look more closely, with the hope of finding in the depths of the mirror the girl with braids and scraped knees I once was, the young girl who escaped to the back gardens to make love, the mature and passionate woman who slept wrapped in Rodrigo de Quiroga's arms. They are all crouching back there, I am sure, but I cannot seem to see them. I do not ride my mare any longer, or wear my coat of mail and my sword, but it is not for lack of spirit-that I have always had more than enough of-it is only because my body has betrayed me. I have very little strength, my joints hurt, my bones are icy, and my sight is hazy. Without my scribe's spectacles, which I had sent from Peru, I would not be able to write these pages. I wanted to go with Rodrigo-may God hold him in his Holy Bosom-in his last battle against the Mapuche nation, but he would not let me. He laughed. "You are very old for that, Inés." "No more than you," I replied, although that wasn't true, he was several younger than I. We believed we would never see each other again but we made our good-byes without tears, certain that we would be reunited in the next life. I had known for some time that Rodrigo's days were numbered, even though he did everything he could to hide it. He never complained, but bore the pain with clenched teeth, and only the cold sweat on his brow betrayed his suffering. He was feverish when he set off, and had a suppurating pustule on one leg that all my remedies and prayers had not cured. He was going to fulfil his desire to die like a soldier, in the heat of combat, not flat on his back in bed like an old man. I, on the other hand, wanted to be with him to hold his head at that last instant, and to tell him how much I cherished the love he had lavished on me throughout our long lives. Ines of My Soul A Novel . Copyright © by Isabel Allende. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Ines of My Soul by Isabel Allende All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
