OK so Isabel Allende books. Apparently I misspelled her name, though I'm totally giggling about how I misspelled it. I think I've learned to misspell in Spanish, if that makes any sense!
So we read a total of three books by her and I Loved them all. Daughter of Fortune (Hija de la Fortuna) and Portrait in Sepia (Retrato en Sepia) are a story and sequel - which we didn't realize at first so we read them in the wrong order, but they were delightful anyhow. The first book is set in the mid-1800's. It's about a young woman (with a mysterious past) from Chile who follows her lover to San Francisco during the gold rush. I don't want to give anything away, but there's a major character who is Chinese so there's lots about China in that book too. Retrato en Sepia takes up later, and it's about the Granddaughter of the woman in the first story, who subsequently ends up back in Chile. I loved them both and would happily re-read them.
The other book we read was Maya's Notebook (El Cuaderno de Maya) which is about a young woman from San Francisco who ends up in trouble with the law and... well, I don't want to spoil it for you, but there's a lot about an obscure region of Chile in the book.
Anyhow, the books were wonderful in Spanish, and full of humor as well as amazing characters. They took us a good long while to read in Spanish so depending on how much of a challenge you're up for you could read them either way. Isabel Allende is bi-lingual, so I'm sure she does her own translations, so you don't have to worry about something getting lost.
I'd LOVE to read more of her books, but CatMan is on a mystery kick, and we're currently slogging our way through a complicated tome set in Barcelona, that is full of bizarre stuff from the Spanish Inquisition and vocabulary that's actually Catalan and not Spanish... let's just say I'd rather be reading more Isabel Allende!
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ninetydegrees
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on 2016-01-08 08:36 am (UTC)So we read a total of three books by her and I Loved them all. Daughter of Fortune (Hija de la Fortuna) and Portrait in Sepia (Retrato en Sepia) are a story and sequel - which we didn't realize at first so we read them in the wrong order, but they were delightful anyhow. The first book is set in the mid-1800's. It's about a young woman (with a mysterious past) from Chile who follows her lover to San Francisco during the gold rush. I don't want to give anything away, but there's a major character who is Chinese so there's lots about China in that book too. Retrato en Sepia takes up later, and it's about the Granddaughter of the woman in the first story, who subsequently ends up back in Chile. I loved them both and would happily re-read them.
The other book we read was Maya's Notebook (El Cuaderno de Maya) which is about a young woman from San Francisco who ends up in trouble with the law and... well, I don't want to spoil it for you, but there's a lot about an obscure region of Chile in the book.
Anyhow, the books were wonderful in Spanish, and full of humor as well as amazing characters. They took us a good long while to read in Spanish so depending on how much of a challenge you're up for you could read them either way. Isabel Allende is bi-lingual, so I'm sure she does her own translations, so you don't have to worry about something getting lost.
I'd LOVE to read more of her books, but CatMan is on a mystery kick, and we're currently slogging our way through a complicated tome set in Barcelona, that is full of bizarre stuff from the Spanish Inquisition and vocabulary that's actually Catalan and not Spanish... let's just say I'd rather be reading more Isabel Allende!