Allende’s fluidly written saga conveys her deep familiarity with the events she depicts, and her intent to illustrate their human impact in a moving way. The scope spans most of the lives of Victor Dalmau, a Republican army medic in 1936 Spain, and Roser Bruguera, a music student taken in by Victor’s family and, later, his brother Guillem’s lover and the mother of Guillem’s child. The story follows them over nearly sixty years, beginning with the tumult of the Spanish Civil War. Guillem is killed fighting against the Fascists, news that Victor can’t bear to tell Roser initially. After surviving separate and terrible circumstances that leave them refugees in France, where authorities treat them with contempt and worse, the two marry for practical reasons in order to join Pablo Neruda’s mission transporting over 2000 Spanish exiles to Chile aboard the S.S. Winnipeg . In Santiago, the Dalmaus find many Chileans sympathetic to the Spaniards, while others make them unwelcome. With a poetic ...
When one of the sea-captains in his employ returns home, Jonah Hancock, a widowed, middle-aged merchant, is aghast. Captain Jones has sold the Calliope and purchased, instead, a small, shriveled “mermaid.” In 1785 London, the dead creature is a lucrative commodity. Dubious, but anxious to recoup his costs, Mr. Hancock decides to display it, which eventually introduces him to a brothel-keeper and her courtesans. Among them is the gorgeous Angelica Neal, who seeks a new protector. Bawdy hijinks ensue – the title predicts the protagonists’ unlikely match – and serious ramifications also. The characters wrestle with their ambitions versus being content with what they have. Leisurely told, and leavened with a knowing wit, Gowar’s debut, a UK bestseller, brims with colorful period vernacular and delicious phrasings (one woman is “built like an armchair, more upholstered than clothed”; another has a “mouth like low tide”). Concerned with the issue of women’s freedom, it offers a panoramic vi...
