Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for letting me read this book. I loved this book, it is well written and the history and the world is beautiful. I loved reading about the characters. I give this book 4 stars

This story of a fictional couple living through very real historical events is brilliantly engaging. Victor is a young doctor in Spain as the civil war begins he becomes renowned for saving a young soldier's life by pumping his heart in his own hands. Roser is the lodger and music student who falls in love with his brother. They are thrown together through familiarity and circumstance as they flew Spain to live in Chile then later in exile in Venezuela. Their story is a saga of their lives and their surrounding characters both real and fictional.
It's an epic tale from place and part of history that I'm not familiar with so I found it really interesting. Definitely worth a read even if like me you've never read any of Allende's novels before

This is a very well written book as you'd expect. There is lot's of detail, lots of history and a lot of time spent describing the background.
However, I did find it quite hard work. I think it's one of those books you need to read regularly as I was quite busy and left it for days at a time and found I'd forgotten what was happening.

A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende
I have long been a fan of Allende’s novels, The House of the Spirits is one of my favourites and I love the magical realism of her novels. This latest novel opens in Spain at the end of the Spanish Civil war and concerns Victor Dalmau who is working as a medic; his training to be a doctor has been interrupted by the war. With his dead brother’s pregnant girlfriend he manages to escape from the terror of Spain under the rule of Franco only to end up living in terrible conditions in a concentration camp in France.
This is the story of indomitable courage in the face of terrible situations and the way in which the human spirit is able to survive the most terrible privations. Through reading the book I was able to gain a much greater insight into the situation in Spain and then later on how the family coped in their adopted country of Chile. Throughout the novel there are references to the poet Pablo Neruda and the friendship which existed between him and Victor. The title of the book is a line from a Neruda poem about Chile. The book is tinged with sadness because the man who was the model for the character of Victor died only a few weeks before the manuscript of his life was complete, at the age of 103.
This is a well-researched and enjoyable historical novel and a welcome return to the huge sweeping novels which Allende wrote in the past. Many thanks to Net Galley and the publishers for the opportunity to read this in return for an honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and to Bloomsbury Publishing for providing me an ARC copy of this book that I freely chose to review.
I have long been a fan of Isabel Allende’s novels, although I haven’t read any of her recent books, despite my best intentions. I read many of her early novels, in Spanish, and I enjoyed her take on Magic Realism, which I found inspiring. When I saw this novel, which combined Allende’s writing with a historical subject close to my heart (I’m from Barcelona, like the protagonist of the novel, and some of my relatives lived experiences quite similar to those Victor goes through), I had to read it. And although it is a very different reading experience from that of The House of the Spirits, I enjoyed it enormously.
This novel is the story of Victor Dalmau, whom we meet at a very difficult moment, during the Spanish Civil War. He was studying Medicine and helps look after the wounded in battle, while his younger brother, Guillem, fights for the Republic. Told in the third person, mostly from Victor’s point of view (there is a fragment where the novel deviates from that, but there is a good reason for it), the book follows his life pretty closely and in chronological order, although not all periods of his life are shared in the same detail. We learn about his family, his parents, Roser (his brother’s girlfriend and one of the students of Victor’s father, a musician), and hear first-hand of his experiences during the war, the retreat (“la retirada”), and the problems a huge number of Spaniards who escaped to France had to face once there.
Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet, is fundamental to the story, not only because he chartered the SS Winnipeg that took many Spaniards (around two thousand) to Chile, escaping from Franco’s regime and the French camps, but also because he personally appears in the novel and each chapter is introduced by one of his poems. In fact, the title of the book also comes from one of his poems, and it is a descriptive metaphor of the country, Chile, that welcomed the refugees with open arms. The story also follows Victor’s later adventures, his studies and work as a cardiologist, Roser’s works as a musician and her creation of an orchestra, and the historical and political upheavals they have to confront, with further displacements and persecution. What is to be an emigrant, how different people adapt to different realities and countries (Victor and Roser are pretty different in this respect), and also the invaluable contribution those very same immigrants make to the very fabric of the country that takes them in, are threads that run through the whole novel.
This is my first experience of reading Allende’s work in English, and I thought the translation was excellent. The language is both functional and beautiful, capturing the emotions of the characters, and vividly portraying their experiences, at times harrowing and at others uplifting. I was very touched by the narrative, and although that might be in part due to my personal connection to the material (not only the historical aspect, but also the experience of life in a different country) , the effect was not limited to the parts of the story I was familiar with. The adventures of Victor and Roser in Chile, Allende’s government (of course, Salvador Allende was Isabel’s uncle), and the military coup, further tested their endurance and made them start again in Venezuela. Added to the larger historical events, we have a story of love, family, and displacement, which will resonate with many readers, even if they are not familiar with the particular historical and geographical setting. Circumstances might change, but the problems are universal.
The author talks about the genesis of the book in a note at the beginning of the book and explains it in more detail in the acknowledgements at the end. Although this is a novel, it is based on real accounts, and its main character was inspired by another Victor, Victor Pey, who lived to be 103, and who experienced many of the trials and tribulations we read about. Allende creates a catalogue of varied characters, complex and credible, and mixes historical figures with fictional ones seamlessly. Victor is a quiet man, hard-working, who prefers action to idle talk, and whose mission in life seems to be to help others. He is a survivor who can be naïve about the consequences of his actions and about the motivations of others, but he always expects the best of others and hopes against hope. Roser, his wife, is a fabulous character, a strong woman who keeps going no matter what, and their relationship evolves through the book, never getting old and with plenty of surprises. There are plenty of memorable characters in the book, some that play a larger part than others, and some that keep popping up at regular intervals as time passes. I was intrigued by the Solan family, fascinated by Juana, their lifelong servant, and also appreciated the small details that add a human touch to the historical figures, Pablo Neruda in particular.
I loved the writing style, poetic and lyrical at times, despite dealing in some very harsh topics. The flow varies, and some historical periods are described in more detail than others, as happens in memoirs. I’ve read comments of readers who say there is too much telling in this novel. There is a fair amount of telling, that is true, by the very nature of the story, but it suits the personality of the protagonist, and to be honest, I cried with the story as it is. I’m not sure I would have managed to read it if it were even more emotional. (I smiled as well, and it is a hopeful story overall, but it did touch me deeply).
I have highlighted many passages, and it’s difficult to choose one or two, but I decided to give it a try.
Here Victor Dalmau observes the work of the female volunteers looking after injured soldiers in the Spanish Civil War:
Volunteer women would moisten their lips, whisper to them, and comfort them as if they were their own children, in the knowledge that somewhere else, another woman might be cradling their own son or brother.
If you are very sensitive, you might want to look away now:
This was to be his most stubborn, persistent memory of the war: that fifteen- or sixteen-year-old boy, still smooth-cheeked, filthy with the dirt of battle and dried blood, laid out on a stretcher with his heart exposed to the air.
And I had to include one from Pablo Neruda, quoted here in chapter 2.
Nothing, not even victory,
Can wipe away the terrible hole of blood.
I love this novel, which I recommend to readers of historical fiction, particularly those interested in the Spanish Civil War and/or the history of Chile, to fans of Isabel Allende, and also to those who’ve never read her before, but are looking for a compelling story, masterfully written, with a memorable cast of characters and a story with many parallels to recent events. I attended a conference about la Retirada (the retreat of around 500000 Spaniards, both military and civilians, escaping to France from Spain at the end of the Civil War, in February 1939) on its 8oth anniversary earlier this year, and looking at the pictures, it gave us all pause, because if we just changed the background of the photographs and the clothes, we could have been watching the news. Like those images, this is a novel that will stay with me. I might be biased but that’s my prerogative and I can’t recommend it enough.

This historical fiction novel from Isabel Allende spans sixty years and two continents, following the lives of Victor and Roser. Although Victor and Roser are fictitious, their stories are based on the lived experiences of the time and Allende was considerably supported in her research by her friend Victor Pey who lived through many of the same experiences as her character Victor. Many real historical personages populate the pages of this novel and impact on the lives of VIctor and Roser.
These two main protagonists were born in Spanish Catalunya in the early part of the 20th century and forced to flee their home like so many Spanish Republicans when Franco took power after the Spanish Civil War. They crossed the Pyrenees and were kept in horrendous conditions in a refugee camp in Argeles sur Mer in French Catalunya. They eventually find passage on the ship The Winnipeg, thanks to poet and activist Pablo Neruda, and travel to Chile. The title of this book, A Long Petal of the Sea, is the name Neruda gave to Chile in one of his poems. Extracts from Neruda's poetry start each chapter of the book and this, along with his important role in the story, encourages me to read more of Neruda's work with which I am only briefly familiar.
In Chile Victor qualifies as a doctor and plays chess with Salvador Allende, Chilean president until the coup d'état of September 11th 1973 (and uncle of the author). At this point General Pinochet took over power in Chile and VIctor and Roser were once again forced into exile due to a military dictatorship, this time fleeing to Venezuela. They are allowed to return to Chile, which they both now consider their home, in 1983 and the final chapter follows their story for another ten years.
I loved reading this book and will recommend it to fans of Allende and of historical fiction but also to those who want to know more about this particular period in world history. I was particularly attracted to the book because of my existing knowledge and connections with both the Spanish and Chilean aspects of the tale and was intrigued to read more of Elisabeth Eidenbenz, the founder of the 'Swiss Maternity Hospital at Elne, a historic building close to Argeles, that I have visited. It was a treat to find Elisabeth as a character in this book.
My one concern about this novel is that the years post 1973 are glossed over too quickly for me and I could happily have read more of Victor and Roser's lives after the Chilean coup.
My thanks to the publisher via Net Galley for a complimentray ARC of this book in return for an honest review.

I have tried to read this several times but just could not get into it. I found it very tedious, possibly because of the translation, but also because I was not interested in the subject.

I enjoyed this book (which I received as an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review). It was a slow-burn narrative of a family displaced first by the Spanish Civil War, first to France and then to Chile, and then later to Venezuela after Pinochet's coup. It's quite a sad tale, the history of which I was not previously aware, and the story's main character weaves through these historical events and figures.

I love Allende's writing and this book didn't disappoint for sure!
It's an epic tale of Spanish civil war when things were complicated in late 1900s in Chile. I find it fascinating to learn historical events while reading a fiction book. And Allende does it so well.
I loved reading about these characters, plot and everything. Full 5 stars.

Thanks a lot to NetGalley and the publisher for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

An epic tale covering the Spanish civil war, French internment camps and the turmoil of late 20th century Chile. Excellent characters and storyline that is both tragic and uplifting. One of my favourite books of the year.

I really enjoyed this, but I will say that it probably isn't for everyone and it is a very slow and measured novel that revels in the detail. The writing style is also one that takes some getting used to as Allende certainly tells rather than shows, the entire book is her documenting things that have happened so you always feel as though you are looking in from the outside. Strangely enough, this actually works here and it might be because it is so clearly a deliberate stylistic choice rather than poor writing, but something that normally drives me insane in books, didn't really phase me at all. I found the gentle, descriptive pace and style refreshing and quite relaxing.

This is quite an epic novel in terms of the span and breadth it manages to portray; covering decades of history across multiple families, this could easily have become either confusing or boring and it is to Allende's credit that it doesn't. Starting in Spain in the 1930s, you witness the build up to World War 2 from a very different perspective than usual portrayals. Instead of reading from the Allies perspective, you get the build up in Spain of the Spanish Civil War between the Nationalists and the Republicans with the atrocities, executions and combat it entailed. You join the Dalmau family to begin with and slowly become enmeshed in the family dynamics until Franco wins the war and as Republican sympathisers they flee, heading to France as refugees. With the family split, the novel becomes more fragmented, following individual characters before swapping and changing over to someone else. Somewhere in this you are introduced to the del Solar family, a well to do, Conservative Chilean family and gradually over the course of the novel the two families come together only to grow apart again and be brought back.

This is the tale of an entire lifetime, from the relative innocence of youth to the creaking of old bones and all the battles and turmoils in between. There is a good cast of characters who juxtapose each other nicely, showing various different political and religious views, landing up on different sides of various conflicts. For a novel that includes so much warfare, it is surprisingly gentle; there are some harrowing depictions of concentration camps, refuge camps and civil conflict but by and large it's all very gentile. The amount of history here is immense; there has clearly been a huge amount of research done and Allende writes about the events convincingly. Her knowledge on the subjects shines through, but it isn't just the Chilean history which must be close to her own heart that are drawn out in such intricate detail, but the Spanish and the French aspects as well. For such a well documented period of time, the choice of focus here is interesting as the flight of Spanish refugees to Chile is one that is not heard often and little is known about it. Here Allende gives that forgotten part of history a striking and powerful voice.

So much is captured in this novel that it is difficult to do it justice in a review, but it is safe to say that this is beautifully written with a light, almost poetic hand even as the horrors and terrors of war and injustice are captured. Allende doesn't shy away from some difficult and gritty topics, but she also doesn't allow that to pull the novel down.

Five stars! Why? Because Isabel Allende, in "The Long Petal of the Sea", blends brilliant writing with a wonderful story of human integrity, love and survival. Victor Dalmau worked as a doctor for 3 years during the Spanish Civil War. He saw terrible brutality and endured incredible danger yet he survived whilst hundreds of thousands of his co-revolutionaries did not. In 1939 he escaped to France and, accompanied by Rosera, was transported on "The Washington" - a ship which carried 2500 refugees to Chile and relative safety, thanks to the efforts of the poet Pablo Neruda. All seemed well for the first few years and VIctor, now a fully qualified heart surgeon and personal friend of President Allende was widely revered. But then, there was a military coup and General Pinochet came to power. All friends of the previous administration were hunted down and executed or imprisoned. Victor found himself back in a prison camp where again he faced brutal hardship. But luck, allied to his medical skills, saved his life and he was granted parole. Unable to live under Pinochet's dictatorship he escaped to Venezuela, where he lived and practised for the next 9 years, with the exception of a brief return to Spain in 1975 following Franco's death, In 1983, when 1800 exiles were granted permission to return to Chile, Victor was among them and was to spend the next 7 years, until Pinochet's downfall, working unpaid in the shanty towns of Santiago helping those too poor to have access to medical facilities. Victor's immense skills as a heart surgeon brought him honours, professor-ships and international respect in the last years of his working life but it is his enduring love and loyalty to his fellow man that leaps off the page. And I have only scratched the surface of this immensely readable book as Isabel Allende surrounds Victor with a backstory full of amazingly vivid characters by whom we are taken on an emotional roller-coaster. Modest, unassuming Victor would surely have been proud to read the final proof of this book but unfortunately, aged 103, he died three weeks before it was completed.

So interesting to read about an event in history yet told around a fictional story. The Spanish Civil War broke out at the same time as WWII and so our scene is set. Our main characters find themselves having to flee their country and find exile in Chile. This story gives us a real feel for the despair and fear of this time and the feeling of not belonging to one country and yet not able to go back to another.
It’s really well told and really quite moving. I was particularly drawn to the historical parts of this book and the poetry of Pablo Neruda, which began each chapter. Well worth reading

A really interesting book, and such a good idea for a novel. It’s strength is in the fact that is a true story and I could hear the voices of those who experienced such a difficult and life changing journey. From a Spain divided by civil war, via concentration camps in France, to Chile, the book spans over 50 years.
For me the work was impacted on by the amount of detail and historical facts. I found it a little too academic, which did not help the flow of the story and my engagement with the characters. I learned a lot however and very much enjoyed the story that accompanied the many facts and detailed description of what happened and why. I can see how much love and research have gone into the book, and I think it will suit a lot of readers.
Thank you to #NetGalley, the author and the publishers for the opportunity to read the book.

3.5 stars

I think the author missed a trick here. This book could easily have been made into a trilogy, starting with the Spanish Civil War, then the early Chile years, then the later years. I did connect with the characters to a degree but it all seemed a little rushed. For example, one character was 10 years old one minute and in about 3 pages he was 27! I would have enjoyed it so much more if there had been more depth. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it, I would have just liked to have known more about the characters and why they took the decisions they did. I enjoy reading stories set around WW2 so this was a departure for me but interesting to see how life continued in countries that weren't involved. It has also sparked an interest in me for in the Spain and Chile, To be honest I wasn't 100% sure where Chile was in South America, so all in all I have learned a lot!

This is a novel, based on real events and some of the characters, including the poet Pablo Neruda and the dictators Franco and Pincochet are, of course, real historical figures. This sort of book is less common in Anglo-Saxon literary circles than elsewhere, but in the classical Roman era pretty well all “histories” were like this, because Roman scholars and gentlemen, such as Tacitus, had a contempt for “mere facts” and expected something that would tell them what historical characters thought and felt and why they did the things which made history.

What Pablo Neruda did to make history was charter a ship, the Winnipeg, to take a couple of thousand refugees of the Spanish Civil War, many Catalans and Basques, from France, where they had been neglected as maliciously as only the French authorities knew how, to Chile, where it seemed as if they might face an uncertain future. While the refugees’ arrival was still anticipated, the various factions of Chile’s divided society projected their own prejudices and expectations on the refugees, but when they arrived they were welcomed and seen for what they were, after which most of them made themselves part of Chile. Neruda’s genius contributed to this integration in a subtle but effective way: he may have selected the refugees more widely than the Chilean president had instructed him to do, but each one was told that they were being allowed into Chile for whatever skill it was that they had, so they all arrived with the idea of making a fresh start with that skill and making a life for themselves. They fled from Spain into France to get away from Franco and probable murder, were treated astonishingly badly in their country of first refuge, but Neruda transformed what started as a second desperate flight into something more positive.

This book shows you this through the eyes of many well-drawn fictional characters, which gives a fair impression of the Spanish Civil war -the author doesn’t allow the reader to think that only Franco’s forces committed atrocities and it is clear that no democracy could really have supported the nun-killing Republicans. The international figures who did intervene in the Spanish Civil War were Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, none of whom held the slightest concern for any Spanish person on either side or the future of Spain. It was all a courtship dance, sacrificing Spanish lives so that Hitler and Stalin could come to terms and form the unholy alliance of dictators which conquered Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway (and almost Finland), Holland, Belgium, France and Greece before it all broke down and Hitler tried to conquer Russia.

That isn’t part of the story, though, because when the refugees reached Chile, they left Europe and its agonies behind them and the dramas become those of families rather than nations, until Pinochet comes to power in Chile and the refugees have to flee Chile and make a new life for themselves elsewhere in South America until it is safe to return, first to Spain on Franco’s death, and then to Chile, their true home.

Why I requested and read this book:
I have always been interested in the Spanish Civil War, because as a schoolboy my father saw six slightly older boys from his school off on a train from London to France, where they would cross the border into Spain and volunteer to fight for the Republican militias. He would see just one of them again. He did not go with them, because of his step-father, a rare survivor from what the Kaiser called, in 1914 “a contemptible little army” who made a stand against a German advance that was rolling up Belgium and France, at a place called Mons. My step-grandfather, a trained and experienced professional soldier with medals going back to 1911, properly equipped and with the might of the British Empire behind him, found stopping the Imperial German Army in its tracks to be somewhat problematic. He knew that the untrained boys going to Spain, with no equipment beyond the walking boots they had been told to purchase and no support from the majority of the British public, had scant chance of survival, let alone success. Having no time whatsoever for symbolic acts of suicide, he convinced my father not to go to Spain, but to wait until Hitler did something to unite the British public against him (something he had very skillfully avoided doing at that point in time) and then something EFFECTIVE might be done. My step-grandfather held effectiveness in greater esteem than heroism and my father was sternly directed on a trajectory towards doing the most effective thing he possibly could, even if it held no opportunity for fame and glory.

A family "saga" from the Spanish Civil War to post-Pinochet Chile - well-written stuff

This novel by Isabel Allende, based on a true story and true events, tells us about Victor, a medical student in Republican Spain of the 1930s, as he lives through - and survives - the Spanish Civil War, exile to Chile, the Pinochet regime, more exile and eventual return to his homeland. Along the way, we encounter members of his family, friends and political opponents as well as the poet, Pablo Neruda. His life is a life of adventure, degradation and love. Characters are interesting and well-developed and the whole story, although inevitably depressing in places, is important and engrossing. Recommended, especially to admirers of Isabel Allende. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was wonderful, lyrical, sweeping and fascinating. I was totally drawn into the characters world as they journeyed from Spain to Chile, the characterisation was outstanding. I hesitate to say too much as I wouldn’t want to spoil it as I think this book is best read with completely fresh eyes.
I’d highly recommend,

A sweeping account of Spanish immigrants to South America following the Spanish Civil War and the start of World War 2. The main focus is on Victor and Roser and their lives - he a medic, she a musician, and how they came to be, and to stay, married as they fled Spain, lived in camps, and made their home in a land far away.

At times the writing gripped me, and was strongest when focusing on Roser and Victor. At others times I found there was far too much detail and background, especially about the political situations. Reading in the endnote that the author shared from her personal research, basing the story on real-life events, made more sense of what felt like excess verbiage. (When an author does all of that research, they can be loathe to cut it out). I scanned or skim read those sections, wiling myself to continue with the book because I’ve so enjoyed some of her other novels previously.

One I can’t recommend wholeheartedly but one I’m not sorry I read.

I love this author's books and this was no exception. The story is fascinating and her characters so real. It swept me away from the first page to the last and introduced me to a part of Chile and Spain's history that I didn't know about.