![]() ![]() ![]() Once Allende's characters are delivered from their greatest risk, we feel as if we are observing their lives, rather than participating in them. No one wants to read about people who are happy because they got what they wanted. She creates a series of mini-emergencies that might prove interesting, except that at the last minute everything works out and disaster is averted. ![]() Allende lets the conflict slip to an unacceptably low level here, for no character really seems at risk any longer. Far stronger is her description of various voodoo rituals, including one where a priestess rips off a chicken's head with her teeth.īut nothing nearly as engaging is going on in New Orleans. This is despite a couple of clumsy attempts at magical realism that really don't work at all. A relation of Chilean leader Salvador Allende, who was deposed in a CIA-backed coup in 1973, she is familiar with living amid political chaos, so maybe this is why we feel utterly immersed in the growing rebellion. ![]() Allende's prose, with something of Marquez and even a little Irving, though with none of Irving's puerile shenanigans, is also strongest in the first half. ![]()
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