Toccante.
E intendo letteralmente perchè anche stavolta, come ogni volta, Isabel Allende mi ha toccata dentro con quel suo garbo inconfondibile.
una penna che ci presenta (sempre, da sempre e quanto vorrei che fosse per sempre) personaggi vivi e in questo caso una storia che è potente perchè sa di vero
(grande ammirazione per Elena Liverani)

"Non siamo scomparse. Il vento conosce il mio nome e anche il tuo." ( )

Read July 2023

Two families, two immigrant stories. Samuel Adler was sent away from Austria on the Kindertransport after Kristallnacht in 1938, first going to England and eventually settling in the U.S. Anita Diaz came to the U.S. from El Salvador with her mother, Marisol, in 2019 but they were separated and she's in the foster care system while waiting for her court case to potentially grant her asylum.

It's obvious that Allende cares deeply and knows a lot about asylum seekers immigrating to the U.S. Unfortunately, the story here is superseded by her theme, and the result is an expository, clunky, didactic book that I wouldn't have finished if it weren't for book club. I could pick a sentence or two almost at random to illustrate the style, so here's a random taste from early on: "That afternoon, the stink of dread stirred up by the wind was suffocating, making him feel dizzy and nauseous. He decided to turn away the patients left in his waiting room and close up early. Surprised, his assistant asked if he was ill. She'd worked with the doctor for eleven years and had never known him to shirk his duties; he was a punctual, methodical man." Information about every character is presented in a similar way, and we get an extensive back story for everyone by this detached omniscient narrator that randomly tells readers things that happened before, filling in blanks between time periods (the story spans 1938 to 2020 and jumps in time a little, while mostly focusing on 2019-2020), and even sharing what will happen to a character in the future. The point of view changes among various characters: besides Samuel himself, a woman named Letitia who came to the U.S. after a massacre in El Salvador, Anita - whose first-person narration, as she talks to her (dead) younger sister Claudia, was the only one I could connect with - and Anita's social worker Selena. And then, because I was so focused on the mechanics of the story instead of the plot itself, little things that didn't make sense, like how a Californian lawyer is suddenly practicing law in Arizona with no explanation, really bothered me. I could go on, but I'll stop there. I read and enjoyed [Zorro] several years ago, and I know that Allende's work is highly regarded, but this one was a miss. Not recommended. ( )

This novel begins with the story of a six year old boy in Vienna in 1938, beginning with the terrible night when his father disappears and he and his mother take shelter in the upstairs apartment of a war veteran while their own apartment is vandalized. He is later placed on a train filled with other Jewish children and sent to live out the war safely in England.

Then, in 1981, another child it taken to the city by her father for healthcare. While she is there, the residents of her village in El Salvador, El Mozote, are all murdered by the military. She and her father flee north to the United States and attempt to put together a life in this new country.

And in 2019, another young girl and her mother arrive in Arizona after a dangerous journey from El Salvador. They are quickly separated and while Anita is terrified, she ends up with allies, an immigration advocate and the lawyer working pro bono. Their first task is to find her mother.

The stories of these three children intertwine over time, and that story is both harsh and lovely. Allende is making a point here, about how damaging being left alone can be for a child, but also how desperate a parent has to be to let a child go in the hopes that they will at least survive. She is interested in what happens in the new, strange place, when the people around that child are not necessarily nurturing or welcoming and the lasting damage done, but also the people who are willing to open their hearts to these children. Allende herself founded a non-profit helping children immigrating to the US and her knowledge of the situation is clear in her writing. ( )

The Wind Knows My Name- Allende
Audio performance by Eduardo Ballerini and Maria Liatis
3 stars

I’ve enjoyed several of Allende’s books beginning with The House of the Spirits. I looked forward to this book which, sadly, did not meet my expectations.

This is a generational saga of fragmented families. It begins in 1938 with six year old Samual Adler who loses his family, but escapes Nazi Austria on a Kindertransport train. A second child refugee, Leticia Cordero escapes violence in El Salvador clinging to her father’s back as they swim the Rio Grande in 1982. The final traumatized child is Anita Diaz, a blind Salvadoran refugee who was forcibly separated from her mother as they sought sanctuary in the United States in 2019. There is a clear political message in this book. There is overt social outrage. I am in complete sympathy with that outrage.

Through chapters that bounce back and forth through the decades, the elderly Samual becomes connected to Leticia Cordero, his Salvadoran/American housekeeper and finally to young Anita Diaz. These are wonderful characters. Their historical backgrounds are traumatic but also full of dramatic adventure. There are numerous adjunct characters who are clearly important to the emotional survival of the three central refugees. I wanted to read about the intertwined lives of these characters.

Allende simply didn’t provide the content that her characters demanded. This book has only 260 pages. It read like a Reader’s Digest edition of a much longer book. I was hoping for more. ( )