This is a beautifully written book. It's also very political. It has the same themes of colonialism, political wars, traditional/catholic views vs modern lifestyles, and family that surround a lot of Latin american works. I read "The House of the Spirits" and I can see how Garcia Marquez influenced Allende. The only reason this isn't getting 5 stars is for the depictions of sex, in a lot of scenes the women don't want to and are more or less raped only to "fall in love/have sex all the time" with the man, it happens multiple times and isn't clearly condemned by the text which is, big yikes.