A Long Petal of the Sea

During the last few Covid months, I’ve had to do some of my reading on my phone—ebook style—which I haven’t really cared for up to this point but found there were positives (like being able to read in bed when Janet was sleeping). Anyway, one book I read was Isabel Allende’s latest novel, A Long Petal of the Sea. It’s a historical fiction epic spanning the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s to the Chilean coup d’état in the 1970s in which the Chilean socialist president, Salvador Allende, was overthrown. And, yes, he’s a relative of the author. I had known little about the Spanish Civil War and even less about the Chilean overthrow, so I enjoyed learning that history.

There are many characters in this story, but the two main characters, Victor Dalmau and Roser Bruguera are both strong and independent, which made for an interesting relationship. The story is written from an omniscient perspective with a lot of telling not showing. However, this works as the novel covers over four decades and, as mentioned previously, there are many characters. The thing that has stuck with me from A Long Petal of the Sea is that extreme socialism (aka communism) and extreme capitalism (aka fascism) only end up destroying the countries they aim to aid.