Dear Bookclub,
Another day in our little paradise, to lunch and chat up our latest read: Isabelle Allende's "My Name is Emilia del Valle". With a variety of opinions about the book, the lowdown:
* great read to learn about the Chilean Civil War of 1891
* got a bit bogged down covering many topics
* hit the right notes with the depiction of characters at that time
* well-written and appreciated for the translation involved
Please enjoy this charming 10-minute interview with Isabelle Allende by NPR's 'Here and Now', Deepa Fernandes, for more insight into Allende's inspiration for this book. Fun to hear the author's voice revealing a bit of her personal history:
Emilia's writer's retreat at the the end of the novel sparked my longtime fantasy of being in a retreat to do nothing but write - and of course, find baskets of nourishing meals at my doorstep throughout the day. Emilia's 'retreat', a cave, on her Chilean wilderness property is not exactly what I have in mind, although, impressively, it worked for her. I would rather have something like Yaddo:
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| https://yaddo.org/who-we-are/ |
My suggestions for an upcoming read:
"Mother Mary Come to Me" Arundhati Roy *chosen
"The Secret Life of a Cemetery" Benoit Gallot
"What the Bears Know" Steve Searles and Chris Erskine
Up next:
Happy reading,
LK
