Allende would do well to remind herself of her own words: “Governments come and go, but poets remain.”. Born in Peru and raised in Chile, Isabel Allende is the author of twenty-four bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including The House of the Spirits, Daughter of Fortune, and City of the Beasts. This is not to say that the work isn’t beautiful — it most certainly is. Through that huge span, we follow Victor and his wife, Roser, as they flee across continents and witness the decades-long fallout from Franco’s rise to power.

It also leads Allende into saccharine generalisations of a kind that would never have made it into a tighter story without irony. Though historical details are important in world-building and rendering a multifaceted, rich story, “A Long Petal of the Sea”s oversaturation with unnecessary details about the comings and goings of governments obfuscates the poetry of Allende’s words. Characters are a lot like gym weights; it’s much easier to hug them close than it is to hold them further away. The same type of storytelling happens in “A Long Petal of the Sea”: Allende, once again, writes in her typical style — as a narrator, recording a long string of continuous events, and as a historian, gathering scattered details to form a long-winded and tiresome story. So the book A Long Petal of the Sea originally written in the Spanish language. The novel itself is undeniably brilliant and rich — it is, however, just like “The House of the Spirits,” a war of attrition to read. “A Long Petal of the Sea” follows the Dalmau family and their friends as they travel across the globe, first as refugees departing Spain under Francisco Franco’s regime, then as exiles to Chile and Venezuela. To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Instead, A Long Petal of the Sea is structured as a series of waves, with tides of sudden catastrophe in which the characters have almost no agency, and ebbs of peace. “A Long Petal of the Sea” is rich with historical details that must have taken an enormous effort to unearth. In the last section, there is a concentration of lines such as: “It led to widespread indignation and strengthened the traditional respect for the laws that most Chileans had.”. The characters and plot lines are wonderfully crafted. “Someday, somewhere — anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.”-Pablo Neruda Moving, inspirational and poetic, A Long Petal of the Sea is a tale of endurance, love and survival despite inhumanity, violence, ruin and loss.