Wow! Let's start off with that. Another amazing book, and another contender, already, for the best book i'll read all year, which brings the tally to 2, and its only January 15th! 'The House of the Spirits' is of the beautiful and tragic love story of 4 generations of the Trueba family. One review on the back of my paperback copy read "-a book about one family and one country that is a book about the world and becomes the world in a book", and I am hard pressed to summarize it better. I'll try by using the authors own words as a line of one of the last pages reads "-and so on down through the centuries in an unending tale of sorrow, blood, and love." Allende undoubtedly owes some thanks to Marquez as some inspiration came from his masterwork "100 Years of Solitude" (a families generations long tale of love, loss, conquest, and death beginning and ending with the patriarch). I will say that 'The House of the Spirits' seems based more in the real world, with more direct lines to real world events, while Marquez's was more allegorical, more a fairy tale interpretation of the world. Even writing this I'm questioning myself, as Allende's book is filled with ghosts, fortune tellers, and clairvoyants, but, in my defense, something about it just 'felt' more rooted in reality. Opinions will vary, but read both before calling me out, lol.
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