For me, book started out strong.....I was captivated and enjoyed every page. Somewhere in the middle, my interest lagged a little but at the end I was absorbed again. The problem I had was with the focus of the book. Who is the main character? At the beginning, I thought for sure, Irina, the young girl who goes to work at Lark House. She is mysterious and has a past that we only learn about as the book unfolds. Actually, all of the characters unfold like that. It keeps the reader interested and curious. But when Irina nearly disappears in the novel, and the focus becomes just Alma, I got a little unfocused myself. But Allende does bounce back and forth and Irina's story unwinds as she gets to know Alma's grandson, Seth.
I lost track of who some of the characters were and who they were related to....I think that was the problem with me, but in the end, it all came together for me and I found myself really liking the book, the story, the writing and the characters. A good read!
There is so much history conveyed in this story....Japanese Internment Camps, WWII, Concentration Camps, the French Resistance, Israel's early days, even the AIDS crisis...almost a little too much, but that is the time frame of this family saga.
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