Donna Davis’s Reviews > In the Midst of Winter > Status Update

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.