On January 8, 1981, while living in exile in Venezuela, Isabel Allende received a phone call telling her that her grandfather was dying. She began writing a letter to him, which gradually morphed into a fictionalized account of the tumultuous recent history of her native country Chile.
"In 1981, in Caracas, I put a sheet of paper in my type-writer and wrote the first sentence of The House of the Spirits ," Allende later recalled. "At that moment I didn't know for whom I was doing it, or from whom. In fact, I assumed that no one would ever read it except my mother, who reads everything I write. I was not even conscious that I was writing a novel." Her efforts to publish the book in Latin America met with rejection, but after The House of the Spirits was released in Spain in 1982, it became a global bestseller and a critical success.
Allende's family had been at the focal point of the conflicts that polarized Chile—and the global community—during the preceding decade. Salvador Allende, often described by the author as her "uncle" but actually her first cousin once removed, had won the 1970 election to become Chile’s President. With 36% of the vote, Allende narrowly defeated former President Jorge Allesandri (who received 35% of the ballots) in a fiercely contested three-way race—thus becoming the first Marxist to win a democratic election for head of state in South America. Three years later, his administration was removed by a CIA- supported coup, which ushered in a 17-year period of military control.
This interlude in Chilean history has been seized by many who aim to draw larger lessons—about everything from the scope of US imperialism to the efficacy of Chicago-school economics. Both Left and Right engaged in ideological warfare to appropriate and interpret this story, although the heat of the debate has been softened somewhat by subsequent events—notably the end of the Cold War and the return of democracy to Chile. Even so, the passion of Allende's fictionalized account has lost none of its intensity, and her novel stands out as one of the most frequently read works of Latin American fiction during the last half of the twentieth century.
In Allende’s novel, the country that provides the setting for the conflict is not mentioned by name. The character based on Salvador Allende is referred to simply as the "Candidate" and, later, as the "President." Pablo Neruda appears under the guise of "the Poet," and other characters represent various real world personages, while much of the unfolding political drama follows closely the actual historical events of the era.
Yet Allende attempts a far bolder transformation here than the usual masquerade of the roman à clef . She borrows the fanciful trappings of magical realism to impart a mythical and mystical tone to her narrative. Only a short while before this book appeared, an author of Allende's ideological persuasions dealing with a historical novel of this scope would probably have relied on the tenets of socialist realism. "Only the love of life gives the artist his unreserved truthfulness towards everything that he perceives and reproduces," Marxist literary critic Georg Lukács had declared back in the 1930s, advocating a scrupulous realism that was destined to become a dominant attitude among the more politicized fiction writers of the middle decades of the century. Allende follows, in contrast, the admonition of Neruda, who once proclaimed: "Poets who are not realist are dead. But poets who are only realist are dead also." Following in the footsteps of Márquez , Rushdie , and others pioneers of modern magical realism, Allende shows in these pages that a writer can impart a powerful fabulistic quality to even a historical novel by mixing elements of gritty realism with large helpings of the fantastic. The technique is not a new one—Homer did the same in the Iliad and the Odyssey —but in the midst of a century that suffered perhaps from an excess of realism, broadcast live into homes for the first time via radio and television, authors only gradually rediscovered that a bold legend could be as persuasive, perhaps even as up-to-date, as the latest headline.
The House of the Spirits is a multifamily and multigenerational tale whose timeline is roughly coterminous with the 90-year life of Esteban Trueba, an adventurer, businessman and politician who sometimes takes over the novel as first-person narrator. The century long span here may remind readers of Gabriel Garcia Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude , whose influence looms over Allende's work. But she also had a more personal reason for this expansive chronology—her grandfather, whose final days spurred Allende to start this book, lived to the ripe age of 99.
At the outset of The House of the Spirits , Trueba falls in love with the beautiful Rosa, whose green hair and bewitching appearance seem more appropriate for a mermaid than a woman. Esteban extracts a promise of marriage, but only on the condition that, before any wedding takes place, he will have proven himself capable of supporting her in some degree of wealth and comfort. Inspired by confidence in his future, Trueba seeks his fortune as a gold prospector. When Rosa dies, the victim of an inadvertent poisoning, Trueba is overcome with grief. In despair, he travels to a remote area of the country where he turns his energies to rebuilding a family farm, long in ruins. His successes eventually brings him back to the city, where he marries Rosa’s younger sister, the eccentric and sibylline Clara.
Clara, whose spirit and presence dominate Allende's novel, had already foreseen the proposal even before Trueba’s arrival. Her clairvoyance is accompanied by other gifts—she can move objects without touching them, commune with the dead and extraterrestrials, and float her chair across the floor with no apparent source of motion. She is incapable of matching the love of her mercurial husband, whose passion for Clara rises in proportion to her distraction and emotional distance. But she provides a powerful, countervailing presence in this patriarchal household, and inspires by example the next two generation of women—led by her daughter Blanca and granddaughter Alba. These women espouse compassion, charity and idealism—sharply contrasting with Esteban’s ruthless pragmatism.
The family prospers financially, even as dissent simmers beneath the surface. Trueba’s hot temper brings him into constant conflict with the rest of his family, but his intense drive and ambition help propel his political career. After the election of the leftist President, Trueba gives support to the military factions that eventually overthrow the government, but is embittered when the new authoritarian regime turns on its own supporters. The divisions in his own family are now echoed in the larger turmoil of the times, and events take a life of their own beyond the now elderly patriarch’s ability to shape or influence.
The House of the Spirits is a sweeping, expansive work—one that would be impressive for any writer, but especially for a first-time novelist tackling such large themes. Not everything works here; at moments the book shifts gears, lapsing for a spell into the conventionality of a telenovela or the one- dimensionality of political sloganeering. But these passages never last long, and Allende soon manages to insert a compelling dose of drama and vitality into the onrushing events and personages of her fictionalized Chile.
This work operates at many levels. It is historical and personal, fantastical and political, passionate and eerily placid, sociological and metaphysical. With so much content squeezed into her novel, Allende runs the risk of losing steam at the end, especially with a 90-year-old narrator taking stock of a much diminished society and equally decimated family. But our author rises to the demands of the final pages, bringing this moving story to an inspired conclusion….and one that transports the reader full circle back to the innocence of opening paragraph.
Ted Gioia writes on music, books and popular culture. His most recent book is The Birth (and Death) of the Cool .