Violeta was born in 1920 during the Spanish flu epidemic and died in 2020 during the pandemic.

In this book, Isabelle Allende returns to her origins, to her first novels, in particular to that first volume born almost by chance in 1982, The House of the Spirits.

Violeta’s father is a del Valle, one of Nivea and Severo’s many children. His sister is Clara, the protagonist of the 1982 novel.

The book is easy to read, and flows pleasantly even for readers unfamiliar with Isabel Allende’s other works, but those who have had the opportunity to delve deeper into the Chilean writer’s literary production will note that there are “many returns” in addition to that of the Del Valle family: the coup, the rounding up of civilians, persecution, summary executions, bodies disappearing into the ocean or at the bottom of an old mine … themes already addressed in the novel Love and Shadow.

The author’s tone is much more detached, deliberately not lingering in the description of violence, of torture, as in the earlier novels: after all, a centenarian sees everything from a different perspective, as does Isabelle, who is now an 80-year-old woman.

Violeta is the victim of a mad passion for a man who will turn out to be a manipulative narcissist, a violent and unscrupulous man with a negative and destructive influence on both of her children.

Violeta’s “blindness” leads her not only to fail to see how monstrous her partner really is, but equally to fail to understand how abhorrent the Chilean dictatorship is. 

It will be a long and difficult journey that will allow her to finally be a woman free of the mental chains of a retrogressive and macho society based on oppression.