A Jungle of Tales

  “My name is Eva…I was born in the back room of a shadowy house, and grew up among ancient furniture, books in Latin, and human mummies, but none of those things made me melancholy, because I came into the world with a breath of the jungle in my memory” So begins this dreamlike tale. Despite all the plot threads coming neatly together at the end the story meanders in an unusual way…which is perhaps why I got nearly 100 pages in before being sure that, yes, this was at least the second time I had read it! That isn’t a bad thing, really: the writing is beautiful, and I didn’t mind discovering it as if for the first time all over again. The way Allende uses Eva’s life journey as a way to explore a time and place and to introduce the reader to a range of distinctive side characters is rather similar to ‘Daughter of Fortune’ – though overall I like that book better, for reasons I will explain in a moment.           ...

  This book reminds me somewhat of a Dominican ‘Little Women’. It follows the four Garcia sisters - but focuses the most on Yolanda (‘Yo’ or ‘Joe’), a tomboy with a talent for writing – as they try to figure out who they are and how they fit in the world following their family’s exile. The writing is evocative, and anyone who has Latin American family or friends will probably recognize the personal dynamics and the contrasts between North American and Latin American life that are depicted here. The environments are vividly described as well. By the 16 th page I was craving guavas, and by the middle remembering descriptions of my grandmother’s first reaction to snow. The first chapter is called ‘Antojos’, a word that is tricky to translate but means something like “a craving of the heart”. Yolanda is visiting the island for the first time in years, and she “ sees herself as they will, shabby in a black cotton skirt and jersey top, sandals on her...