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/lit/ - Literature

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[ERROR] No.2186034 [Reply] [Original]

/lit/, sorry but frankly I am not sure what I am supposed to pull out of this book after its four hundred something pages. It was about so many different things and people, and there were barely even protagonists who stayed constant throughout the entire story, unless you consider Esteban a protagonist (I'd consider him, but others disagree). It's hardly a traditional narrative. I don't see how all this stuff about family and femininity and politics all ties together.

>> No.2186072
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This, Allende's first novel, is told mainly from the perspective of the two protagonists Esteban and Alba.

Its about a family, that spans generations, tracing the post-colonial social and political upheavals their country.
When Allende's hundred year-old grandfather was dying, she began writing him a letter that ultimately became the starting manuscript
The NYT says its "SPECTACULAR" and it was made into a movie. I think I'll see it now.

>It's hardly a traditional narrative.
Sounds like a good thing, no?
>I don't see how all this stuff about family and femininity and politics all ties together.
Her first effort. Like Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club, maybe she was just jamming too much into it. A torrent of ideas, frantic first timers
I think maybe your problem is that you just can't relate or sympathize. (?) Meh.

>> No.2187217

>>2186072

Well, I don't mind a book that's got a lot of different ideas going on, but I feel like the book's too expansive. Like, she has a lot of "points" to make, but I don't really understand the "point" of the book. Am I making sense?

>> No.2187230

Allende is a hack. Stop and burn it.

>In an article published in Entre paréntesis, Bolaño writes that Allende's literature is anemic and compares it to a person on his deathbed.[27] Bolaño has been one of her harshest critics, saying that it is to give her credit to call her a writer and that she is rather a "writing machine".[28] Literary critic Harold Bloom concurs with Bolaño that Allende is a bad writer, and adds that she only reflects a determinate period and that afterwards everybody will have forgotten her.

These guys are right.

>> No.2187249

>>2187230

Care to explain? I found her prose, at the very least, to be strong and colorful throughout the story. I've read that she has been accused of ripping off Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but I don't really understand that.

>> No.2187252

>>2187249
>but I don't really understand that

Maybe reading isn't your thing then.