Review by New York Times Review
IN ISABEL allende'S new novel, a snowstorm and a car accident bring three people together on an unexpected journey that transforms their lives. As if this premise is not sufficiently hackneyed, Allende adds literary insult to injury by spelling it out in breathy prose: "Over the next three days, as the storm wearied of punishing the land and dissolved far out to sea, the lives of Lucia Maraz, Richard Bowmaster and Evelyn Ortega would become inextricably linked." The novel is riddled with such formulations. Seemingly intended to stab at the surreal, fablelike quality for which Allende is known, they come off as merely soppy and uninspired. In fact, the story owes less to magical realism than to histrionic crime dramas. Richard, a lonely, aging professor, sets out in a car from his Brooklyn apartment and collides with a vehicle being driven by Evelyn, an undocumented immigrant who happens to be driving her employer's car. She turns up at his apartment later that night, distraught and unintelligible, her Spanglish broken by a stammer she developed after suffering a brutal gang assault in her native Guatemala. Richard calls his tenant Lucia, a middle-aged visiting Chilean professor under his direction at N.Y.U., to help. The three split a pot brownie, as one does during blizzards with strangers, and swap life stories. It comes out that there is a corpse in Evelyn's trunk, which won't close thanks to the crash. She is terrified of returning the damaged car to her employer, the abusive Frank Leroy, who is sure to come after her if he knows she's seen the body. Naturally, Evelyn can't go to the police either. Moved by her plight, Richard and Lucia decide to help her dump car and corpse. This fantastic bit of plot - why on earth should they undertake such a risk for a stranger who, for all they know, committed the murder herself? - is supposed to be justified by their own immigrant histories: Lucia fled Chile's military junta in the 1970s; Richard, whose father escaped the Nazis, hears "his father's voice deep inside him reminding him of his duty to help the persecuted." As the trio journeys upstate, the novel flashes back through each character's past - Lucia's memories of a family fractured by war in Chile, Richard's doomed marriage in Brazil and Evelyn's tragic childhood in Guatemala. Some images are memorable: Lucia's murdered brother is "a feeling, a fleeting shadow, a kiss brushing her forehead"; a Guatemalan gangster has "tattoos spreading like a plague across his skin." Though inventive, these back stories are marred by simplistic exposition ("the deep crisis dividing Chile became unsustainable") and clunky dialogue ("this violence is the result of an endless war against the poor"). They plead with the reader to have sympathy for Latino immigrants, which is a fine humanitarian agenda. But heaps of suffering and misfortune cannot give depth to thin characters. Nor can love. Lucia and Richard fall into a late-age romance and, as in Allende's other love stories, their passion inspires some of the novel's most cringeworthy lines: She accuses him of having spent "many years with your soul in winter and your heart locked away." It also leads to a rosy, fairy-tale ending, which figures awkwardly in a novel that wants to tell the truth about immigration. This neat conclusion is a missed opportunity. It is difficult to imagine a more urgent time to tell stories of Latino immigrants. With references to Donald J. Trump and racial resentment in America, Allende is clearly eager to weigh in on the political moment. But the story is too shallow and the writing too syrupy to make for a thoughtful treatment of the subject. The characters' back stories plead with the reader to have sympathy for Latino immigrants. Elizabeth winkler is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal's "Heard on the Street" column.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 21, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* No one should be driving in blizzard-struck Brooklyn, but emergencies have forced Richard, a lonely academic, and Evelyn, a nanny caring for a boy with cerebral palsy, out onto the icy streets where their vehicles collide. When Evelyn reveals that she was driving her employer's car and that there's a body in the trunk, Richard summons his basement tenant and colleague, Lucia. Internationally beloved Allende (Ripper, 2014), as effervescent in her compassion, social concerns, and profound joy in storytelling as ever, brings both humor and intensity to this madcap, soulful, and transporting tale of three survivors who share their traumatic pasts while embarking on a lunatic mission of mercy. Life-embracing, funny, and tough Chilean journalist Lucia is hoping, still, for love after surviving political violence, exile, loveless marriages, and cancer. Richard, the American son of Holocaust survivors, suffers debilitating guilt over long-concealed disasters in Brazil. Evelyn made the perilous journey to the U.S. from her destitute Guatemalan village after being brutally assaulted by gang members. Allende has a rare and precious gift for simultaneously challenging and entrancing readers by dramatizing with startling intimacy such dire situations as the desperation behind illegal immigration and domestic violence, then reveling, a page later, in spiritual visions or mischievous sexiness or heroic levity. No wonder she was inspired by Albert Camus: In the midst of winter, I finally found there was within me an invincible summer. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling Allende will tour coast-to-coast with her latest, drumming up the usual reader frenzy.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The audiobook of Allende's latest novel employs the vocals of three actors with mixed results. Actor Boutsikaris is a master of tempo, and her well-tempered reading here keeps listeners fastened to the story. Jones and Cuervo, on the other hand, tend to enunciate too carefully, obstructing Allende's rhythms and causing listeners to focus on individual words rather than the story as a whole. That said, the three actors convincingly portray the three protagonists of Allende's story, all of whom cross paths in Brooklyn. Each is scarred by experiences related to the Latin American political landscape of the 1970s: NYU professor Richard Bowmaster is a human rights scholar who has worked in Brazil; his tenant, Lucia Maraz, is a visiting professor from Chile; and Evelyn Ortega is an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala who crashes into Richard's car while driving her employer's Lexus on a snowy day. The book includes a somewhat awkward mixture of light romantic comedy and heavy personal and political tragedies-the Pinochet years, the terror of MS-13, the plight of immigrants, and the hideous business of sex slavery in the U.S. The readers are sweet in the romantic parts, but Allende's minute descriptions of violent personal and political events are harder to follow. An Atria hardcover. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
A big bang brings together two professors, an illegal immigrant, and a frozen corpse during a 2016 blizzard. Professor Richard Bowmaster rear-ends a Lexus driven by Guatemalan nanny Evelyn Ortega, who then appears that evening at Richard's brownstone with a harrowing tale that requires Richard to call up his basement tenant, fellow professor Lucia Maraz, to help. Over the next few days, the trio will attempt to solve a murder, two will fall in love, one will need to disappear, and another will need to find resting peace. Dennis Boutsikaris presents Richard with equal parts dignity and desperation, revealing a past filled with selfish decisions, lost relationships, and self-imposed isolation. Alma Cuervo becomes Lucia, her voice rich and melodious, buoyant and solemn, as she shares the teacher's Chilean past, her family nearly destroyed by deception and violence. Jasmine Cephas Jones assumes Evelyn's horrific losses of siblings and culture-perhaps even her sanity-with compassion and grace. VERDICT The terrific triad bring gentle nuance and empathic energy to Allende's latest best seller; libraries will want to be prepared with all formats to meet high demand. ["Allende puts a human face on the realities of illegal immigration, broken hearts, courage, and healing": LJ 11/1/17 review of the Atria hc.]-Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, -Washington, DC © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Thrown together by a Brooklyn blizzard, two NYU professors and a Guatemalan nanny find themselves with a body to dispose of. "Blessed with the stoic character of her people, accustomed as they are to earthquakes, floods, occasional tsunamis, and political cataclysm," 61 year-old Chilean academic Lucia Maraz is nonetheless a bit freaked out by a snowstorm so severe that it's reported on television "in the solemn tone usually reserved for news about terrorism in far-off countries." Her landlord and boss, the tightly wound Richard Bowmaster, lives right upstairs with his four cats, but he rebuffs her offer of soup and company. Too bad: she might have a crush on him. Enter Evelyn Ortega, a diminutive young woman from Guatemala Richard meets when he skids into her Lexus on the iced-over streets. Evelyn's hysterical reaction to the fender bender seems crazily out of proportion when she shows up on his doorstep that night, and he has Lucia come up to help him understand why she's so upset. The Lexus, it turns out, belongs to her volatile, violent employerand there's a corpse in the now-unlatchable trunk. Once Lucia gradually pieces together Evelyn's storyshe was smuggled north by a coyote after barely surviving gang violence that killed both of her siblingsthe two professors decide to help her, and the plan they come up with is straight out of a telenovela. While that's getting underway, Allende (The Japanese Lover, 2015, etc.) fills in the dark and complicated histories of Richard and Lucia, who also have suffered defining losses. The horrors of Evelyn's past have left her all but mute; Richard is a complete nervous wreck; Lucia fears there is no greater love coming her way than that of her Chihuahua, Marcelo. This winter's tale has something to melt each frozen heart. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
