Just finished reading . . .

Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende

10/10


I have taken to turning over the corners of the pages of books, when I want to go back and read an impressive or particularly meaningful sentence. Because Allende is such an eloquent, intelligent, insightful storyteller, there are lots of corners folded back in this book. I like to read second-hand books, and I so wish that the previous readers had marked their favourite passages too. That would be like receiving messages from the past. That romantic notion is obviously a result of having just read this book!
Isabel Allende is such a gifted writer and thinker. I put off reading her books because they look challenging, with their unbroken pages of text, but she pulls you through the story with ease; no hard work involved at all.
This is Aurora's story, and that of her family, stretching across from Chile to America, with nods to European and Chinese culture along the way. She is a perfect writer. No thread is left unaccounted for. Each personality is big and wondrous, so that you feel like you know them. She makes us understand people, relationships, history and politics, and how they all shape each other.
If you have never read Isabel Allende before, this book is a good place to start.
I have turned over a corner on the very last page where she says "In the end the only thing we have in abundance is the memory we have woven. Each of us chooses the tone for telling his or her own story."