VIOLETA
Allende, Isabel Trans. by Frances Riddle Ballantine (336 pp.) $28.00 | Jan. 25, 2022 978-0-593-49620-6
KI RKUS REVI EWS
BEST INDIE BOOK OF 2021
In a rueful account written for her grandson, a 100-year-old South American woman recalls her tumultuous life. Born during the Spanish flu pandemic, Violeta Del Valle spends her early years quarantined with her well-off family in the capital of an unnamed country (one that resembles Allende’s native Chile). With her mother ill, she is largely raised by her warm-spirited, independent-minded Irish governess. The family fortunes gutted by the Great Depression, her father kills himself (Violeta discovers his body). While living in relative isolation in the country, she meets and marries a German veterinarian whose life is mostly about finding a way to preserve the semen of pure-bred bulls. Tired of playing the submissive wife, Violeta, in a heated scene that could be a parody of romance novels, is swept off her feet by a dashing but soon abusive Royal Air Force ace of Latin American origins who runs guns for the Mafia and performs missions for the CIA. “Held together by a perpetual cycle of hate and lust,” even when he takes up with another woman, the couple—though Violeta remains legally married to the vet throughout—has a son whose sensitive nature doesn’t sit well with his macho father and a daughter who will become a drug addict. While there’s no lack of incidence in this chronological epic, which is punctuated by glancing references to historical events including the rise of military takeovers, Allende’s reductive style deprives the book of narrative power. For all she goes through, Violeta is thinly drawn— her great business success as a home builder seems tossed in like an afterthought. And the “floods, drought, poverty, and eternal discontent” she refers to are kept offstage. A slog even Allende fans may have trouble getting through.
"A candid tale that triumphantly understands the Midwestern psyche, delivering moments of beauty and tragedy.”
y o u n g a d u lt
A NOVEL OBSESSION
Barasch, Caitlin Dutton (336 pp.) $17.00 paper | March 15, 2022 978-0-593-18559-9 A writer looking for inspiration stalks and befriends her boyfriend’s ex in this stylish, energetic debut. Naomi Ackerman is a sparsely published 24-year-old writer who has recently entered into her first committed relationship with Caleb, a Welsh expatriate who works in catastrophe modeling. Deeply insecure, both about her slowto-start literary career (she lives rent-free in a Greenwich Village apartment—no excuses!) and her new relationship (does he love her or just the convenient location of her apartment?), Naomi is unprepared to learn that Caleb’s ex-girlfriend Rosemary lives
ISBN: #978-1-7375856-0-2 www.RoubidouxPress.com AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE 1.14.22
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kirkus.com
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fiction
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15 january 2022
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