Title: Daughter of Fortune

Author/Artist: Isabel Allende

Publisher: Flamingo

Media: Book

Reviewer: Irene Kappes

The depth and breadth of this novel make it difficult to capture in a few paragraphs. It is the story of several characters. The main protagonist is Eliza Somers, a young woman brought up in the British colony of Valparaiso, Chile in the 1840s, by a Victorian spinster and her brother. Eliza reaches the age of sixteen in a world of colonial Victorianism combined with the powerful presence of her Maputo Indian nanny, Mama Fresia. Already pregnant, Eliza embarks on a journey to California, to find her lover who has abandoned her and joined the rush for gold. She finds herself on a more important journey of self-discovery as her struggle for survival and independence take over and her friendship with the traditional Chinese doctor, Tao Chi’en develops.

Allende, with her lucid, flowing style, is an expert story-teller, who draws the reader deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of characters, places and events, from Victorian England to nineteenth-century China to the gold-fever of California. This will come as no surprise to those who have read other Allende books. Her ability to vividly conjure places and events has not dwindled. If anything, her writing of the horrors of Vietnam, in ‘The Infinite Plan’, and of the all-consuming illness and death of her daughter Paula, in the book of the same name, seems to have sharpened her ability to convey struggle and personal journeys.

I read a review of the book recently which said that you either love or hate magical realism. To sum up Allende’s writing in this way seems grossly reductionist. There is much more to her writing than the application of a simplistic genre label would suggest, and Daughter of Fortune is no exception.