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.

Lyrical historical fiction. This is the story of Spanish heart surgeon Victor Dalmau. Sweeping across 7 decades it includes the horrors of the Spanish civil war, exile to Chile on the Winnipeg (organised by the poet Pablo Neruda), and the Chilean military coup.

This is a story of allegiance, belonging, love and family. There's a gentle poetry to the writing that at times belies the turbulent subject matter.