Violeta del Valle was born in 1920 while the Spanish flu raged outside her parents' house in Santiago, Chile. A hundred years later she lies dying while another pandemic sweeps the world. In between the two she lives a full, eventful life. She marries, embarks on a passionate love affair, has children who bring joy and despair, helps her brother rebuild the family fortune, and manages to avoid retribution from both left and right wing of Chile's political extremes.
Told in the first person, at first seeming like a memoir but as it goes on turning into a letter to a grandchild, it should be a fascinating story, but for me it sadly fell flat. I'm sure I've read Isabel Allende's work before and enjoyed it but it may be that my tastes have changed over the years. I didn't really feel I knew Violeta, or the multitude of characters that come and go in her life. Maybe the scale was just too sweeping for the length of the book, maybe it was the 'telling, not showing' style of writing, but I certainly wasn't emotionally invested in the outcome. Violeta's life, despite financial and personal losses, seemed to me to be cushioned from the harshness of the world around her, and the terrible realities of Chilean politics. Yet I'm sure this wasn't the author's intent.
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