In 2020 Violeta Del Valle is one hundred years old and dying as the coronavirus pandemic rages worldwide. She finds it oddly appropriate, as she was born during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1920. The story of her life is related in an extended autobiographical account addressed to Camilo (whose identity is revealed about halfway through the book).
Violeta’s childhood is spent as the spoiled daughter of a wealthy businessman in Santiago, Chile, but when the business fails and her father dies shamefully, her family choose to exile themselves in the far southern wilderness of the country. From there, she and her brother start to rebuild.
We get Violeta’s perspective of growing up, getting on, surviving life’s knocks, and growing old in twentieth century Chile. Over the years she gets through a few relationships and sees the carnage wreaked on the country by a succession of regimes, dictatorships, and brief periods of democracy. Her business acumen, in partnership with her brother, gives her some financial independence and protection that helps her manage her less successful personal and family life.
The twin tale of Violeta’s life and her country’s trials carry the reader effortlessly forward, keen to discover the next development. Allende skilfully conveys how a life story is a succession of lives lived in changing contexts, be they personal, political, economic, or cultural. The sixteen-year-old is different at thirty-six, fifty-six, seventy-six. Different priorities, different loyalties, different abilities, but at heart the same core values and underlying personality.
A thoughtful,
interesting, and insightful read.
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