Book Review: Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende

About:

Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende is the second book in the Involuntary trilogy, continuing the family saga. Ms. Allende is a Chilean-American novelist, known for focusing on women’s experiences in Latin America.

• 400 pages
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperVia
  
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0063021730

My rat­ing for Portrait in Sepia — 2
Buy Portrait in Sepiafrom Amazon.com*
More Books by Isabel Allende*
More books translated by Margaret Sayers Peden*

Thoughts:

I enjoyed Daughter of Fortune, the first book of the trilogy, very much. After finishing the novel, and finding out it was part of a trilogy, I went out and bought Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende only for it to languish on my “to be read” pile for about a year.

This book, however, was disappointing. I found it quite boring in the beginning, but the story got better when the narrative was moved from San Francisco to Chile. While the women in this book took center stage, unlike her previous novels though, they didn’t shine.

Even if a book is a sequel, it has to be a standalone story, and I simply didn’t feel this was the case with Portrait in Sepia. There are pages and pages of narration, and so many characters crammed in to the point where the actually story gets lost.

The many characters were dull and underdeveloped. I didn’t care about any of them except one minor character. The spark that I enjoy so much in Ms. Allende’s books was missing, and it was a struggle to finish it.

Part one of the book is a long flashback, part two takes place in San Francisco and Chile, and then the book ends with… another flashback. The ending was emotionless, hasty without any payoff for my insistence to finish reading it.

Synopsis:

Aurora del Valla grows up in a privilege environment but is tormented by nightmares. As a child, Aurora suffered a traumatic experience which erased her memories from the first five years of her life.

Buy Portrait in Sepiafrom Amazon.com*
More Books by Isabel Allende*
More books translated by Margaret Sayers Peden*

Zohar — Man of la Book
Dis­claimer: I got this book for free
*Ama­zon links point to an affil­i­ate account, the money is usually spent on books

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Summary

Reviewer

Man of la Book

Review Date

2023-11-30

Reviewed Item

Portrait in Sepia by Isabella Allende

Author Rating

2