Status Updates From De winter voorbij

This is very good. My first Allende!

Isabel Allende has me hooked and caught up in the lives of the characters!

I’m reading so many Winter books this month but I’m really enjoying it. I love Autumn 🍁 but the stories I’m craving lately have lots of snow and stormy nights. Really looking forward to this one!

realmaente es una historia cautivadora más que nada me gusto que es algo q se puede vivir en la vida real más que ficticia. la historia de lucia ,evelyn y richard son desgarradoras,pero como dijo lucia "la fuerza de la gravedad no es el equilibrio del universo si no la fuerza adhesiva del amor" GRAN HISTORIA.

Me encanta cómo Isabel Allende me cuenta mil historias dentro de una misma historia...y que todo calce perfecto, que tenga conexión y tenga un sentido

Did not expect murder.

"En medio del invierno aprendí por fin que había en mí un verano invencible." (Albert Camus)

Love Daniela.

Evelyn's employer's husband wishes their son had died at birth, and this, he tells himself, is why he beats his wife. And when did she turn into such a wimp? She used to fight back. Evelyn doesn't even bother to go see Miriam; her employer has become her surrogate mother. She doesn't want to leave her or the kid, because what would happen to them?

I cannot recall ever having been angry like this--really angry, my chest is thumping--with a fictional character. Richard Bowmaster is such an asshole.
Allende is such a smart writer. She draws this guy so well, and is clearly intentional in giving him a weak, self-centered personality. He can justify anything if it serves him.

Not my kind of book, but I'm going to try to stick it out a little longer. Too much recent history about events and countries I have very little knowledge of.

Evelyn's experiences in Guatemala, and then in the USA, are the stuff of which nightmares are made. Allende has never been one to pull punches. After an especially harsh passage we are returned to the Lexus and Marcelo is swathed in a cardigan on top of his doggy sweater, and I feel better, but not a bedtime book.

Love Marcelo and the moose.
There are some that will laugh at the prospect of anyone falling crazy in love with a woman of 60, and I'd bet my last dollar that Allende doesn't give 2 shits about those people. Some how, that makes it all the sweeter.

Richard is such an interesting character. He has always been so conservative, yet here he is, not only helping dispose of a body, but deciding how to do it. I can't wait to see where she takes this.

"En medio del invierno aprendí por fin que había en mí un verano invencible" Albert Camus

The narrative shifts between past and present, and Evelyn's nightmarish immigration ordeal is so brutal, both because of what she goes through and because this is the GOOD coyote, the guy with a reputation to maintain, that I had forgotten the corpse in the Lexus. Happily, Allende reminds us.

The tortured guerilla lover in Montreal; now she is laughing about him with her mother in Vancouver. The narrative is, as almost always, so convincing that I feel as if Allende has drawn from her own experience, yet if I add up her memoirs along with all of the too-real-to-be-completely-fiction passages I've read, she would have to have lived at least 6 times to work it all in. Just an amazing writer and feminist.

Me gusta, pero no entiendo cómo los personajes pueden aceptar tan fácil lo que pasó. No entiendo.

We get Evelyn's backstory from Guatemala, and it's terrible. There's a rape here that some rape survivors won't be able to move past. Interesting shaman; is this peyote she's brewed up?

Pull back to mid-20th century Chile. Lena, Lucia's mother learns she is a widow, but then also learns her husband was a bigamist. Meanwhile, Allende is elected, galvanizing some--an openly Marxist leader!--and outraging others. Looking to Cuba for the path toward a better society; right wing fears the Cuban example and warns that the Soviets will move in and ruin everything.

Have put this one on hold for a bit

have put this one on hold temporarily while I get to some other books!

Instalove entre Lucia y Richard? No pinta tan bien.

Richard: un hombre que su pasado ha opacado su presente. Lucia: una mujer que su pasado la ha impulsado a vivir su presente. Evelyn: la historia de nuestra gente.

We've met Evelyn, a terrified Guatemalan refugee. Richard bumps into her on the ice, fretting about the cat and whether it will be treatable by vet. Evelyn isn't the most cooperative soul, since she has actually filched her employer's Lexus to drive while he is out of town, and now the damage is quite visible. Richard calls on Lucia to assist with Spanish translation.

"No, but Lucia wanted to make love in a loving way, for the pleasure of her body as well as the tranquility of her spirit. She wanted to make love with someone who felt as she did. She wanted to be accepted without concealing or pretending anything."

Qué lindo es volver a leerte, Isabel! En estos momentos debería releer "Paula" pero siento la compañía de la misma manera al saberte entendedora de todo el sufrimiento por un ser querido tan cercano 💜

I remembered how venerable and renowned Allende is, but I had forgotten how human, how funny.

Isabel Allende siempre tiene una magia a la hora de escribir... aunque no es su mejor libro... no he podido soltarlo

De momento es impecable, y la escritura maravillosa, como todo lo que escribe Allende. El hecho que la protagonista sea una mujer de unos 60 años hace que este libro se aleje de la típica historia de amor entre dos personas jóvenes.