The House of the Spirits

“Barrabas came to us by sea…”

Reading the last line –which is also the opening line- made me burst in tears.

I cried my soul out; I cried for love, family, war, cruelty, terror and beauty all found in this one book.

It’s a first for me to read a Latin American novel and boy how amazed I am. Amazement is the predominant feeling I have among these rollercoaster feelings that are still shaking me after going through this wonderful book.

During this long reading journey, I didn’t feel bored or distracted once. Allende has a way of telling the story that makes you wholly absorbed in astonishment. I was fully absorbed that I couldn’t put it down until I was finished. The plot is very rich, the characters very real even the most eccentric ones fit  to perfection in this epic puzzle. I loved Clara’s eccentricity and her son Jaime’s tenderness. I felt compassion for Esteban Trueba despite his bad temper and excessive tantrums. I was in shock seeing how crude, twisted and cruel Esteban Garcia was, but then I said to myself that such people do exist and I have to accept that fact “it’s part of the design”.

You can find it all in this book: beautiful writing, an eccentric cast of characters yet very real that anyone can identify himself with one of them, family matters, generation conflict, fantasy, history of a nation, politics and love.

This is what we call a good Great read.