Started last night... I rescued this book from the local transfer station(dump) used goods trailer. Never read any of this author's work but I've heard of her of course. Niece(once removed) of Salvador, socialist President of Chile. It didn't end well, of course. Chile, the craziest country in the world geography-wise. A thousand miles long and a hundred wide(more or less). Inside the front cover is a sticker that say's "Ex libris" above the nib of a fountain pen and in small print below the signature "Virginia Sorgi" it says IL MENEGHELLO MILANO. On the title page is the hand written inscription "To Adria, the storyteller, in celebration of life!" with the drawing of a flower next to the signature of Isabel Allende. Cool! Too bad it's not "Emma" and Jane Austen.Anyway, I've read the first few stories and have found them to be reasonably entertaining. Mostly about resourceful women in what seems like a male-dominated world. Nothing particularly notable going on here literature-wise. Is Eva Luna an alter-ego for the author?Day two... More of the same. Lots of senoritas and senoras who are by turns sad, stupid, seduced, sexy and seductive, sage, silly and so on. The best story so far is her biggest stretch: "Walimai". According to the Wiki page a lot of "serious" SA writers(most notably Roberto Bolano) dump on IA for being too commercial. At least in this book the stories seem for tht most part to be kind of shallow and innoffensive.Last night and done... The second half of the collection presents a more varied menu with more ups and downs in quality. As follows..."Our Secret" - pretentious overheated claptrap. Making love "without complications" is called fucking. We're presented with the "sex cures anything(for a while anyway)" myth."The Little Heidelberg" - I see that IA's writing is placed in the category of "magical realism". If it's real how can it be magical and vice versa???? This story's a little too "magical"."The Judge's Wife" - a stinker. Sex kills?"The Proper Respect" - kinda flat and uninteresting after a while. Goes nowhere."Interminable Life" - more real and therefore more compelling. Solid."A Discreet Miracle" - another good one. A funny ending! Wasn't Opus Dei a part of "The DaVinci Code"?"Revenge" - ridiculous, hardcore baloney."Letters of Betrayed Love" - ho-hum. The author's running out of gas here."Phantom Palace" - more of that mag-real stuff. Not to be taken seriously."And of Clay We Are Created" - more real and better as a result. The real is moving. The magical is not. Final verdict? IA is a decent writer but wastes too much of her and our time in the sex-romance-magic-fate zone. She pushes those possibilities so far they wind up sounding silly. Her more real-life based stories are better... more impactful. 2.75 stars.
Originally posted on my blog, SpecFic Junkie.Isabel Allende's style works well for short stories; many of her novels feel like short stories entwined into a longer piece of fiction. In many ways, The Story of Eva Luna is Allende at her best: sensual and startling, heavy with magical realism, and handling serious issues with beauty and gravity. Unfortunately, I felt like many of the stories were fleeting, leaving me with no impact. The ones that did, though, were well worth my time.First of all, the prose is simply beautiful. I haven't read an Allende book where the writing wasn't drop dead gorgeous, but I felt like this collection was a better representation of her writing than Portrait in Sepia. Sometimes, it's easy to get lost in the beauty of her words, losing track of the story.The premise of The Stories of Eva Luna is a play on Arabian Nights. Eva Luna's lover tells her to tell him tales, and this is what she responds with. I wish more had been done with the premise, like in Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man, but it's possible I missed some allusions that were hidden in the text.And while I mentioned that many of the stories were fleeting, there were a few that stood out as the cream of the crop. My favorite was the first one in the collection, which used a wonderful magical realist framework to harp on the beauty and power of language. The book as a whole, though, I think suffered from the fact that the first was my favorite. In fact, most of the stories I liked the most were loaded at the front, meaning as I progressed throughout the collection, I felt more and more disillusioned.Another strong point for Allende is her ability to take and hold highly conservative viewpoints I don't agree with and not make me feel like she's moralizing. (Unlike Innocence.) In fact, it's often difficult to tell if these are her viewpoints or if they're simply an artifact of the era she so often writes in or the attitudes of the characters. Frex, there's a lot of homophobia tied up in the tales (and in many of her books), but I never feel like I'm personally being told I'm wrong and bad.Perhaps The Stories of Eva Luna would have been better if I'd read a story a night, rather than reading the entire collection at once. Perhaps then more of the stories would have had an impact, and I would have appreciated them more. It's hard to rate a collection of short stories where I'm floored by some and simply feel "meh" on others. And I certainly don't want to go through and rate every tale.I'd recommend this collection for anyone who loves Allende's writing, but for folks who are new to her, I'd certainly suggest starting with something else.
What do You think about The Stories Of Eva Luna (2001)?
I'd read a few of these stories in Spanish ("Dos Palabras" and a couple others), and was pleasantly surprised to find that the translations preserved the beauty of the originals. I found myself skimming occasionally, and wishing I had the Eva Luna context that would make for an ability to fully appreciate the stories.When I read "Letters of Betrayed Love" in Spanish, I don't think I'd read/heard of Cyrano de Bergerac. Having read the English translation of Allende's story with Cyrano de Bergerac in mind, I found a greater appreciation of the optimism underpinning the story, and the way that it was actually a complex voicing of an unvoiced perspective in the Cyrano de Bergerac tale...
—Tortla
THE STORIES OF EVA LUNA is a collection of 23 short stories set in a fictional Caribbean country. Written in the style of magical realism, these are tales about the lives, loves and lovemaking of impoverished but hearty folks, including bandits, scoundrels and prostitutes, who confront cruelty, misfortune or death.Although only six of the stories incorporate the characters and events in Allende's novel EVA LUNA, they do constitute a sequel of sorts, especially the final story. For an overall richer experience, read EVA LUNA first.
—Greg Bascom
مجموعة قصصية لطيفة، مع أنني شعرت بأن الكثير من القصص أقرب ما تكون إلى فصل أول في رواية طويلة منه إلى قصة قصيرة. المجموعة أتت بعد رواية ألليندي "إيفا لونا" حيث نسمع القصص بصوت إيفا نفسها، هذه القصص التي ترويها لصديقها "رالف كارل" (الذي كان حاضراً في أحد هذه الحكايات) نرى فيها عدة شخصيات معروفة سابقاً من عالم ألليندي، وبثيمة إيزابيل النسوية المعروفة، نرى نساء ذوات شخصيات قوية، من الشابة الصغيرة حتى العجوز، النساء ينتصرن في النهاية، ولكن على طريقتهن الخاصة. النسخة الإنجليزية تحتوي على 23 قصة، بينما ترجمة علماني احتوت على 15 فقط، ولم يُكبّد المترجم نفسه عناء التوضيح حتى، وهو أمر غريب؛ لأن الفرق ما يقارب 100 صفحة أو أكثر.
—Ebrahim Abdulla
