Women's Worlds: Real and Magical

I finished Writing Women's Worlds, enjoying it greatly.  I wrote to the author, a professor at Columbia, to tell her so, and she very graciously wrote back, thanking me.  That's one of the nice things about reading a scholarly book: the writers are often not famous (other than in academia), and their email addresses are completely accessible on the websites of their schools.  If your email doesn't go in the person's junk mail box, you may get a reply.

I'm now almost finished with Isabel Allende's first novel, The House of the Spirits.  It's really quite good, and I don't know why I didn't get into it the first time I tried to read it.  It's a saga about a family in Chile, the Pruebas, from the turn of the 20th century into modern times.  They are an upper middle class family, land owners, who go through the turbulent 20th century and are affected by it in various ways.

What makes this novel different from others of its genre is that it incorporates magic realism in telling its story.  Magic realism is a technique that describes magical and supernatural events as if they were no big deal, placing them in an otherwise ordinary, realistic narrative.  At first, readers are startled to see magic in what they assumed was a realistic story (not science fiction, horror or fantasy), but eventually, they get used to it and come to accept it as natural and ordinary, the way the story's characters do.

But even though the magic elements stand out, they are not what make The House of the Sprits a great story.  In this story, it is the realism that gripped me.  When I think of sagas, I think of romance fiction and its ilk, since that's the genre where sagas normally appear.  But the family saga in this story is not in the least romantic because it shows the way people really act and think.  The main characters are all flawed, and their flaws cause them and the people around them great pain, even while their perfections give great joy. 

Because of the stark realism, it's hard to know who to root for in this story, but it seems that Allende gives the women a slight edge, though several of the men seem worthy of praise and admiration.  Wanting to know what happens to all the characters is what keeps me reading.

What is perhaps the most striking feature of this novel, though, is the wonderfully detailed descriptions of the people, places, and events of this (not entirely) imaginary world.  It presents a rich tapestry that is quite satisfying (especially if you like details).  It makes me wonder if James Lee Burke picked up this method from Allende. Maybe I'll ask him.

One thing I don't understand in this story, though, is why we occasionally get the first-person narration of the main character, Esteban.  Along those same lines, who is telling another part of the narrative and referring to her/himself as "I"?  Perhaps I'll find these things out before I finish the book.

I am enjoying it and recommend it highly.