Thursday, February 16, 2006
Book Review: Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
Writing Style-6.4
Originality-6.8
Plot-6.2
Merit(whatever that means)-5.8
Overall-5.9
This is a historical fiction novel from Chilean author Isabel Allende. It’s centered around one young girl's venture from Chile to San Francisco in 1849, during the height of the California gold rush, to find her lover.
It starts rather awkwardly. I wasn’t sure who the main character was supposed to be. It goes into great detail about several character's backgrounds. And the first character that it goes in depth about actually turns out to be a fairly minor character in the main plot of Eliza, the young Chilean girl’s, adventure. Not sure what that was about. This kept me from getting into the novel from the start because as soon as I would come to care about this guy it would start talking about Eliza’s adoptive mother’s life. Then once I got into her story it would go into Eliza’s. Then into this Chinese doctor’s life, Tao Chi’en, who becomes very close to Eliza. By the second half of the novel it seemed to gain some focus as you pretty consistently follow Eliza and Tao’s lives in California.
It’s pretty good historical fiction. I really liked the detail in Tao’s background. He was sold into slavery, then was Shanghaied, meaning some sailors got him drunk and stowed him away on board a ship and by the time he woke up they were at sea and there was nothing he could do about.
It also goes into how Tao's biggest dream is to marry a girl with perfect "golden lillies", which are tiny (3 to 4 inch) deformed feet. It was common at that time in China for young girls to have their feet bound so that they couldn't grow because men found it attractive. It's crazy how society can shape what we find attractive isn't it? And then what lengths women have to go to in order to keep up with these requirements. In the west at this time, of course, you had corsets, which is fairly similar.
The novel is richly detailed, both the characters and the world that they inhabit. My critique is not the level of detail, but simply who the author chooses to focus on at the beginning of the novel—it just seemed odd.
Ultimately it’s about a young Eliza naively chasing after her love and the contrast between what she has in her head and what she actually gets. The relationship between her and Tao is really nice. There is a weird sort of love there; at times brotherly-sisterly, at times fatherly-daughterly, and a tad bit romantic—but above all, unlikely.
Unfortunately, the story really loses steam towards the end. I thought that it was a pretty good, well written novel that needed some fat trimmed from the beginning and a tighter ending.
Amy pretty much devoured it and really loved it though. She really loves reading about other cultures and there’s a lot of that here with the great diversity in San Francisco and the Chileans and British colonials of the age and Tao’s Chinese background. This stuff is probably the novel's strongest selling point.
Originality-6.8
Plot-6.2
Merit(whatever that means)-5.8
Overall-5.9
This is a historical fiction novel from Chilean author Isabel Allende. It’s centered around one young girl's venture from Chile to San Francisco in 1849, during the height of the California gold rush, to find her lover.
It starts rather awkwardly. I wasn’t sure who the main character was supposed to be. It goes into great detail about several character's backgrounds. And the first character that it goes in depth about actually turns out to be a fairly minor character in the main plot of Eliza, the young Chilean girl’s, adventure. Not sure what that was about. This kept me from getting into the novel from the start because as soon as I would come to care about this guy it would start talking about Eliza’s adoptive mother’s life. Then once I got into her story it would go into Eliza’s. Then into this Chinese doctor’s life, Tao Chi’en, who becomes very close to Eliza. By the second half of the novel it seemed to gain some focus as you pretty consistently follow Eliza and Tao’s lives in California.
It’s pretty good historical fiction. I really liked the detail in Tao’s background. He was sold into slavery, then was Shanghaied, meaning some sailors got him drunk and stowed him away on board a ship and by the time he woke up they were at sea and there was nothing he could do about.
It also goes into how Tao's biggest dream is to marry a girl with perfect "golden lillies", which are tiny (3 to 4 inch) deformed feet. It was common at that time in China for young girls to have their feet bound so that they couldn't grow because men found it attractive. It's crazy how society can shape what we find attractive isn't it? And then what lengths women have to go to in order to keep up with these requirements. In the west at this time, of course, you had corsets, which is fairly similar.
The novel is richly detailed, both the characters and the world that they inhabit. My critique is not the level of detail, but simply who the author chooses to focus on at the beginning of the novel—it just seemed odd.
Ultimately it’s about a young Eliza naively chasing after her love and the contrast between what she has in her head and what she actually gets. The relationship between her and Tao is really nice. There is a weird sort of love there; at times brotherly-sisterly, at times fatherly-daughterly, and a tad bit romantic—but above all, unlikely.
Unfortunately, the story really loses steam towards the end. I thought that it was a pretty good, well written novel that needed some fat trimmed from the beginning and a tighter ending.
Amy pretty much devoured it and really loved it though. She really loves reading about other cultures and there’s a lot of that here with the great diversity in San Francisco and the Chileans and British colonials of the age and Tao’s Chinese background. This stuff is probably the novel's strongest selling point.
