Translated fiction #7 of 2023

I feel like the magical realism was too fantastical to allow the depressing sociopolitical narrative to really resound. Like, despite class conflict and radicalism being peppered throughout the first row acts in order for the final act to come to fruition, I was so taken by the tales of Clara’s childhood and Blanca’s romance and the intergenerational relationships that the ending felt sudden, not in what I felt was realistic, but rather a little grating. There also was a lot of “telling” instead of “showing” but this overall didn’t detract from the fact that Allende is a remarkable storyteller. In the end, the novel was a whirlwind accomplishment, with lucid commentary on the hardships of Chile before and after the short era of Allende (or “the Candidate”).