VIOLETA

In a rueful account written for her grandson, a 100-year-old South American woman recalls her tumultuous life.

Born during the Spanish flu pandemic, Violeta Del Valle spends her early years quarantined with her well-off family in the capital of an unnamed country (one that resembles Allende's native Chile). With her mother ill, she is largely raised by her warm-spirited, independent-minded Irish governess. The family fortunes gutted by the Great Depression, her father kills himself (Violeta discovers his body). While living in relative isolation in the country, she meets and marries a German veterinarian whose life is mostly about finding a way to preserve the semen of pure-bred bulls. Tired of playing the submissive wife, Violeta, in a heated scene that could be a parody of romance novels, is swept off her feet by a dashing but soon abusive Royal Air Force ace of Latin American origins who runs guns for the Mafia and performs missions for the CIA. "Held together by a perpetual cycle of hate and lust," even when he takes up with another woman, the couple—though Violeta remains legally married to the vet throughout—has a son whose sensitive nature doesn't sit well with his macho father and a daughter who will become a drug addict. While there's no lack of incidence in this chronological epic, which is punctuated by glancing references to historical events including the rise of military takeovers, Allende's reductive style deprives the book of narrative power. For all she goes through, Violeta is thinly drawn—her great business success as a home builder seems tossed in like an afterthought. And the "floods, drought, poverty, and eternal discontent" she refers to are kept offstage.

A slog even Allende fans may have trouble getting through.