On my last two trips to South America (Colombia & Brazil), I brought an Isabel Allende novel [The House of the Spirits & Eva Luna]. Her long form descriptions and ability to transcend reality bringing her reader through a mystic journey perfectly complemented my own travels and travails. Maybe it was the headspace I was in, or the long bus rides, or just simply her talent as a writer that allowed me to escape cualquier physical space I was in at the moment, and be taken to the alternate reality she created.
Here are some of my favorite quotes from Eva Luna -House of Spirits coming soon-
pg. 8: “That is the Most Holy Virgin Mary,” the nun explained to her. “She is God?” “No, she is the Mother of God.” “Yes, but who has the say in heaven, God or his Mama?”
pg. 43: “There is no death, daughter. People only die when we forget them…If you can remember me, I will be with you always.”
pg. 53: “You’re grown up now, and I can’t keep you. You’ll have to go to work and earn your living and be strong, the way it should be,” said my madrina. I was seven years old.
pg. 70: At night she slept in her coffin, partly to become accustomed to it, to lose her fear of it, and partly to irritate the patrona, who never got used to the idea of a coffin in her house.
pg. 76: He even wrote a letter to the Ministry of Trade, suggesting the possibility of towing an iceberg from the polar zone, crushing i, and scattering it from airplanes to see whether it might change the climate and combat the laziness of his country men.
pg. 141: …but many had no way to pay because only rarely did they have money in hand. They were, in fact, suspicious of the paper money that today was worth something and tomorrow might be withdrawn from circulation, according to the whim of the current leader, printer paper that could vanish if you turned your back–as did happen with the collection for Aid to Lepers, devoured by a goat that ambled into the treasurer’s office.
pg. 164: I believed I had become truly invisible.
pg. 173: Rolf Carle began working with señor Aravena the same month the Russians launched a space capsule containing a dog. Rolf’s Uncle Rupert was infuriated when he heard the news: “That’s the Soviets for you, they don’t even respect animals!”
pg. 187: “As I approached my seventeeth year, I grew to my full height and my face became the face I have today. I stopped examining myself in the mirror to compare myself to the perfect beauties of the movies and magazines; I decided I was beautiful–for the simple reason I wanted to be….
I began to wonder if anything truly existed, whether reality wasn’t an unformed and gelatinous substance only half-captured by my senses. There was no proof that everyone perceived it in the same way; maybe Zulema and Riad, Halabi and others had a different impression of things; maybe they did not see the same colors or hear the same sounds I did. If that were true, each of us was living in absolute isolation. The thought terrified me..
pg. 203: It took a constant effort of imagination to fill in the parts of my past that were missing. Even my mother was an ephemeral shadow I had to sketch clearly in my mind each day if I was not to lose her in the labyrinths of memory.
pg. 214: …although she was a vegetarian, she ate like a rabbit.
pg. 281:…then sell me a past, because mine is filled with blood and lamentation, and I cannot use it in my way through life.
The other component I found out about half way through the House of the Spirits is that everything she wrote was deeply rooted in political history and representative of a time of serious unrest within Chile. Choose to read into the history of these battles and the experience reading her novels may be that much more enriched; I have not, but plan to do so then reread the novels in Spanish… 🙂
Jessie's High Horse 