Word: novelled
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Allende's novel focuses on the upward mobility of those from relatively low classes in Venezuela to become respected members of the country's elite. It also focuses on the corruption rampant within the military regimes and even the ensuing democracy that replaces it--to little effect...
...political commentary, however, is incorporated into the plot and the characters' lives themselves. There are no sections that blatantly castigate the existing regimes. But by emphasizing the theme of individual success, the novel has a strong optimistic undercurrent...
ALLENDE'S novel focuses on the story of Eva Luna, whose name, she says, means "I am life". A natural narrator, she tells us that she was conceived as part of a cure for a native Indian who was poisoned by a snake bite. As her parents are dead, her story centers on her life in the capital city, presumably Caracas, where she works as a domestic servant. Her only companions are her adopted grandmother, Elvira, who sleeps in a coffin every night to avoid spending extra money on a bed, and her godmother, whose head, Eva says, is addled...
...first half of the novel, in fact, centers on Eva's moving from job to job in an upwardly mobile search for a normal employer who will treat her humanely. Initially a slave to the minister of the interior, who requires her to shave him every morning while he sits on his velvet-covered toilet, Eva moves to the home of a Yugoslavian potter. She teaches her the secret of creating images out of Universal Matter--a conglomeration of bread dough, dental cement and magic...
...idyll does not last. Unfairly accused of killing one of her employers, Eva runs away and joins the Venezuelan underworld, a change that affects the direction of her life and the theme of the novel...