I came across Isabel Allende when I was 16 and was looking for books similar to One Hundred Years of Solitude. Somebody recommended The House of Spirits (her first novel) to me which I read in a day and is one of my all time favourites. I've read a couple of other novels from Isabel Allende who in my opinion consistently delivers well written books often with aspects of magical realism intertwined with the rich history of Chile, and political and social insights. 

A Long Petal of the Sea is a historical fiction novel (with no elements of magical realism), a family saga spanning from 1936 to 1994. Based on the true events of the ship Winnipeg which carried over 2,000 Spanish refugees from France to Chile in 1939 organised by the poet Pablo Neruda, the story follows the lives of a young doctor Victor Dalmau and his wife Roser. While the story is fictional, the book provides a realistic account of the Spanish Civil War, the political situation in Chile during WWII and after. While I enjoyed learning about the historic events depicted in the novel, the story itself can lack excitement at times as some of the plot events are described more than once and felt a bit repetitive.   

Many thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for my review opy in exchange for an honest review.

From Spain during the Civil War to Chile, then exile in Venezuela and back to Chile, this beautiful novel covers a period of history that most of us no nothing about. It follows the lives of Victor Dalmau and his wife Roser from youth to old age. It's a sweeping epic of a novel with a host of likeable and not so likeable fictional characters. The politicians such as Franco, Salvador Allende and Pinochet are all real, as is the poet Pablo Neruda. Having loved The House of the Spirits I looked forward to a touch of magical realism (my favourite genre), but there was none. I would have given it five stars but for two reasons. Firstly (as others have pointed out) it reads at times like a history lesson and secondly it's a bit like a joke without a punchline. There are no surprises or twists and turns as in the books I usually read. It is linear going from point A to point B in chronological order. The writing is beautiful and the story engaging but for me it doesn't follow the introduction, conflict, crescendo, resolution, happy-ever-after-ending of the type of stories I am used to. It kind of meanders from one place and time to another until everyone is old or dead, just with a lot of drama and bloodshed along the way. It is probably why I never read non-fiction.
However, don't let that put you off. It's a beautiful story and well worth reading.

I think it’s been over a decade since I last read one of Isabel’s books. The House of the Spirits remains her masterclass and, many years ago, after I read that I threw myself into her writings. However, after a while I felt a bit exhausted by them – sentences that went on for pages and overdoses of magical realism left me a bit numb – so I wondered what I would find back in her world.

I needn’t have worried as this new novel sees Isabel in top form blending the personal and political to manifest the horrors and hope of life as a refugee. A contemporary subject, yes, but one that has a long history and A Long Petal of the Sea sees us follow a young idealistic couple through the ravages of the Spanish Civil War, the agony of rejection and concentration camps at the French border before escaping to a new life in Chile – only to find themselves caught up as political refugees in their new home as the spectre of military dictatorship rears its ugly head.

Covering such an epic period of time could be onerous – after all, this book covers about 50 years and Isabel invests in weaving the lives of her fictional protagonists, Victor and Roser, with the likes of Salvador Allende and the Nobel Prize-wining Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. But Isabel’s writing is light, seeming to effortlessly dance across the years puncturing her beautiful prose with moments of real darkness as horrors of the Disappeared and atrocities are starkly realised.

This story is one that I sense Isabel has long wanted to tell. The treatment of Spanish refugees at the end of the Spanish Civil War and their flight to Chile is not one that is well-known outside of the impacted communities. And, of course, it is a historical subject with agonising and telling overtones for today’s world too. But this is also a novel that examines the fallout of these social upheavals that shatter class boundaries and bring together communities and people who would never cross paths in more ordinary times.

A surprisingly hopeful work that causes us to wrestle with themes such as the nature of ‘home’, the passage of time and the source of hope. I loved every minute of this, I really did. I flew through it.

Unfortunately this was just an ok read for me. At times I struggled with it and found it a little bit boring in places.

I read a lot of Isabel Allende's work when I was in my twenties. Back then I loved her use of magic realism in her earlier works which blurred the lines between reality and the imagination. This book, however, is written in a very different style and tells its tale in a very simple and sometimes shockingly realistic way. The narrative is clear, logical and very easy to follow even as it moves about in time and location, there are no real surprises and the reveal towards the end is no real surprise. Having said that, this book is not about thrills and suspense, the story has considerable impact and both the characters and the historical action, which are given equal importance, pack a powerful punch. This is an epic family saga spanning more than fifty years of personal and political turmoil. Allende's rich and evocative storytelling ensures that we become deeply invested in her main characters as they survive the turbulent and horrifying years of Franco's Spain and Pinochet's Chile without ever losing hope or love from their lives. Allende beautifully explores some of the darkest shades of C20th history through the personal lives of her characters, picking apart the eternal tale of the refugee/immigrant and the options they face, questioning where home, family, and loyalties collide and revealing how people manage to survive and even prosper emotionally through the worst of times. This is an excellent book which I would happily recommend to lovers of historical fiction and of generational family sagas. It is due to be published in January 2020. Thank you to @netgalley for my free advance publication copy which has not influenced by review.

Never having read any of Isabel Allende’s books I was not sure what to expect . I love this it has a lovely lyrical writing style and is packed full of characters and information about a period in modern history that I know little about .
Victor Dalmau along with his sister in law Roser flee the Spanish civil war managing to get a space on a ship sent from Chile . Life as an immigrant in a country where social standing is fixed and rigid is not easy, but Victor’s skills as a doctor and Roser’s as a musician help them to integrate. Pinochet ‘s term as presidential dictator of Chile turns Victor and Roser’s life upside down again This is a huge sweeping romantic story about refugees, immigrants ,exiled people and how you find home and family again .

A fan of her first novel I was pleased to read this new outing. Full off of interesting characters and a new look. Great family saga although some passages of the political changes were a little long.

Isabel Allende digs into her own family's history for this sweeping, romantic epic that covers the days before the Spanish Civil War to the end of Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile - about 50 years. The central characters start life in Spain, on the losing side of the war, and travel to Chile where they create a new life. It's a lush story of love and betrayal, secrets and lies, war and peace.

A Long Petal of the Sea takes a fascinating period of time (the Spanish civil war, the Chilean coup d’etat), and tells a story of a family over the decades. The familial tale itself is emotional engaging and holds the attention, but is rather unsatisfying in its delivery. I’d not read Allende before and was expecting a poetic lyricism, but the prose is rather clunky and repetitive at times, with stilted dialogue that kept taking me out of the moment. Sadly i found this increasingly frustrating, so whilst it’s a 4* story, its only a 3* book...

I absolutely loved this book - what a pleasure to read it. Allende's lyrical, informal style carries the story across continents and through conflicts from the Spanish Civil War to the 1973 Chilean coup d'etat, binding you up with so many characters and sharing in their triumphs and their catastrophes.

At the heart of the book is Victor Dalmau and his relationship with Roser Bruguera, and through the development of their relationship and their changes of circumstance over distance and time, Allende weaves an enchanting story of epic proportions.

It is at once a tender and unsentimental exploration of belonging and exile, and what it means to have a home. So much happens in the course of the book and Allende educates without preaching and illustrates some of the most challenging events by demonstrating their effect on individuals.

Reading this book is like taking a holiday and going on a trip where you are accompanied by a charming and thoroughly knowledgeable guide who shows but doesn't openly judge the people you meet along the way.

One of the things I most loved about this book is the author's writings about old age - the older she herself gets the more moving and inspirational her writing about old age becomes - if we can all reach the same self-acceptance and peace that her characters do, we shall be doing very well indeed.

And such a beautiful ending, truly a delight from start to finish - thank you so much for making an advance copy available, that was a perfect gift.

I am aware of Isabel Allende’s success and popularity but this is the first of her books which I have read. The publisher’s blurb appealed to me as I do enjoy reading about real events from the perspective of those who are not the instigators. The story told here is a formidable tale but for me the telling was dull.

As I read A Long Petal of the Sea, I remarked to my husband that it felt like a text book or a newspaper feature. I half seriously suggested Allende must have been a journalist…Google confirmed this.

The book is full of facts, crammed with facts, overflowing with facts about the Spanish Civil war, the turmoil in Chile and the second world war. Allende’s research is vast and thorough and to me, it seemed this took precedence over the human story. It is written clearly, easy to understand but in my opinion, lacks warmth and involvement. One thing, though, it reinforces how lucky I am to live in a time and place where I have never had to suffer as the exiles and refugees did, even though “otherism” is as rife now as it ever was.

In the acknowledgements, Allende writes: “This book wrote itself, as if it has been dictated to me.” Yes, it reads as if it has been dictated! Whilst I did not enjoy the style, nor really the story, I know there are readers who will love this.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for the Advanced Reader Copy of the book, which I have voluntarily reviewed.

Isabel Allende is one of my favourite authors and I have read a lot of her books over the years. This one is a real epic in every sense of the word and I read with fascination, admiration and at times horror at what humans inflict on fellow humans. The central characters are Victor Dalmau and Roser Bruguera and the novel takes us from the Spanish Civil War to Chile in 1994. Victor and Roser fight on the Republican side against Franco’s Nationalists, they flee Spain and go to France, from there they eventually go to Chile as poet Pablo Neruda hires a ship The Winnipeg to rescue some the trapped Spanish citizens. The long petal of the sea in Chile and this is how Neruda describes it to those he has rescued. Each chapter has some of Neruda’s words or poetry which is lovely. Here are real events combined with fictional characters to create an amazing historical novel.

This is an incredible story which takes an overarching look at real events and to me it felt like a docu-drama. I like the first part of the book more than the second as I think the storytelling of the Spanish Civil War is very compelling. I had Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica in my mind as I read about the shocking events. The part of the story in Chile is very good and at times shocking - Pinochet’s military dictatorship is well documented and is part of other books by Isabel Allende. I think perhaps because I knew less about the story set in France and Spain and so I enjoyed those sections more. My one criticism is that the story is told in the third person and at times this feels a bit impersonal but I’m assuming this is a deliberate choice as at times the characters have to detach themselves from horrific events around them.

The book has many themes. There is love especially between Victor and Roser, there is hope symbolised by The Winnipeg and a new life in Chile, there is a desire to find a place to belong as Victor and Roser’s life journey took them to several countries, there is war and dictatorship, there is bravery and survival. This is a massively ambitious book and tremendous respect goes to the author for daring to tell such a huge story. There are some fantastic descriptions and one of the ones that I will remember is when Victor felt his heart physically break with the reality of the Nationalist victory in Spain and the consequences of that for him and others. The characters real and imaginary are fantastic- I especially love Roser as her optimism in the face of terrible odds is inspirational and Victor is brave, loyal and deeply caring.

Some of the events are heartbreaking and shocking both in Spain and Chile. I had no idea that France called the Spanish refugees Undesirables and either sent them back to Spain or put them in concentration camps where many died. That Roser and Victor survive to live on so successfully in Chile is miraculous. This is a soaring, inspirational tale which had me gripped from start to finish and I like that the book finishes on an optimistic note for Victor.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing.

A powerful, romantic, evocative and beautiful novel that has reminded me how much I love Allende's passion for words, people and Chile. I really enjoyed this book.

I love the use of Neruda's words to open each chapter and how woven his poetry - and the themes of his writing and life - are in the book. This is an epic story beginning with the spanish civil war and ending with the fall of Pinochets regime that repays a slow luxurious read.

A beating heart

Isabel Allende’s novel begins with the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and ends shortly after the fall of the Pinochet regime in Chile. The events of these tumultuous years are witnessed through the eyes of two families, one Catalonian republicans and the other conservative minded Chileans. Each chapter begins with a quotation from the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and he as well as other real life Chileans have their own significant parts to play in this long story. Neruda, for example, persuades his government to permit a thousand defeated Spanish republicans to be brought to Chile and offered refuge.

The respective family histories are well drawn holding interest and supplying a number of healthy surprises and shocks, but the real meat of the novel is the history of modern Chile, no ‘banana republic’ this, but an active and established democracy, relatively welcoming to refugees, even if they might be socialists, or worse, communist atheists. It is also about the betrayal of that democracy by the Pinochet junta, supported by the USA, and the rule of terror imposed on those suspect to the junta, not least the people who has arrived as refugees from Spain so many years before.

Despite the seriousness of these themes, the violence of the Spanish civil war and the Chilean junta, as well as incidental family and personal tragedies, this is a positive, ultimately optimistic book, which reveals a trust in the general decency of human nature in the majority of people, even between individuals of differing political beliefs. I enjoyed Allende’s novel very much: the story is excellent, powerful but simply told, and I learnt much about the history of Chile in the last fifty or more years.

2.5 star


The storyline itself was good,it involved a lot,war,exile passion,prison.... it all sounds quite epic.
The writing however was only ok. Just a bit dull.
I've really enjoyed Allende in the past,but this misses the mark.

This was a time period I wasn’t familiar with and I found the historical aspect very interesting. However, as others have said, I found it very disjointed and it was difficult to keep track of all of the characters.

It is a well written and interesting book, but needed more character development to be truly great.

Victor Dalmau is training to be a doctor when the Spanish Civil War breaks out, and he spends the rest of the war as a medical auxiliary. When war is over and the Nationalists have won, he has to flee Spain with his sister in law Roser - a pianist, engaged to his brother and pregnant. Offered passage to Chile by Pablo Neruda, they marry in order to be able to go and so begins their new life. Eventually exiled by the Pinochet regime, they go to Venezuela and eventually back to Chile, which has become their home.

This is based on a true story, and as a guide to the history of Spain and Chile in the 20th century it's fascinating. It's as beautifully written as you'd expect from an Allende book, with well-drawn characters - even the supporting characters have a personality - but as other reviewers have said, it's a little disjointed. Victor and Roser come off the page at you, although I have less of a sense of their son, apart from him feeling entirely Chilean, despite being Spanish and born just into France. I preferred Allende's earlier books, but this reflects the depth of feeling for Chile, and is worth a read.

Really well written and interesting. There was a lot of history in this book that I did not know about. I enjoyed this book from an historical point of view. I found it hard though to keep reading in places as I tried to connect to the characters and their story.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

This story follows the lives of Victor Dalmau and his journey to becoming a doctor and surgeon and his brother's fiance, pianist Roser Bruguera and their subsequent marriage of convenience in order to flee their homeland Spain, after the Spanish civil war. The book reads more like a documentary than a story but still fascinating. The Spanish civil war is something I knew little about really, until now. There are very detailed facts about the war and take over, woven in the pages between Victor and Roser's journey and subsequent arrival to take refuge in Chile and how all their lives their past never went away.
I couldn't help but love this couple, who felt loyalty to Victor's brother and yet became the best of friends, feeling much more than friends a lot of the time. It was impossible for them to divorce for fear of being exiled from Chile. Roser gave birth to a son, Victor's brother's baby, which Victor brought up as his own.
There is an abundance of characters, far too many that I could keep track of but a few stuck clearly in my mind. One particular story I found haunting, one where honour in the family and keeping the family name intact was far more important than feelings. And a priest I didn't like becoming one which enraged me.
The story follows the couple right up to the end of their lives, and what lives they had!
This is a heavy read in places but really needed to be able to get the full impact it all had on Victor, Roser and their family. Truly fascinating.
I wish to thank NetGalley and the publisher for an e-copy of this book which I have reviewed honestly.

Many years ago I read lots of Allende and loved the magical realism and her quirky tales. I have not read an Allende book for a while and perhaps it would have been best if I had left this one alone. The writing style is so disjointed that I struggled to maintain any interest in the characters. The book reads like school history project, with strange asides and facts which I thought would lead on to something else but were dead ends. Not for me.