My guess is that Isabel Allende was culturally trained at a young age for story-telling. Her plot lines always seem to unfold seamlessly: the next paragraph, and chapter following logically, without question, as the most normal outcome of preceding events.
Allende does well with her historical novels, I think, because she is researching her own family tree, her own country’s history, and more realistically, the histories of South and Central America. At some point, there will be a serious movie (not Zorro) incorporating her stoies of the nineteenth century.
Isabel spears a name from a dartboard, a Frenchman, Toulouse Valmorain, who arrives in Haiti in 1770 to take over the family plantation. Clear family bloodlines disappear almost immediately, as in the savage West Indies, the melting pot has begun with colors, creeds, and races all copulating with whomever, or, so it seems, the nearest at hand.
Allende deftly juggles half a dozen story line threads: Toulouse of course, as a plantation owner; his mistress Tété, who is a slave, but a family retainer, not a field worker; and Etienne Relais, a royalist Frenchman, Major of the guard in Haiti. Remember 1793 was the date Marie A. {let-them-eat-cake) was guillotined.
Earlier Isabel has set up Violette Boisier, a courtesan of mixed heritage. It seemed important at that time to keep track of white-black blood mix: half, quarter, eighth,; but also with whom it was mixed: Spanish, French, or English. So, a lot of variations possible and all of them came about.
The great slave rebellion of 1791 marks the midpoint of Allende’s story. The 500,000 slaves on this small island easily fought off the few French regiments and burned all the plantations, driving off the few thousand Europeans.
The focus changes after this revolution to New Orleans. Toulouse Valmorain has sired two children, Maurice, born by Toulouse’s first wife, a Spanish nobelwoman; and Rosette, whose mother was Tété. The novel follows their growing up, intertwined with events in France under Napoléon Bonaparte, like the Louisianna Purchase in 1803. Toulouse builds another sugar plantation. The pace of the book seems hurried in the final pages, trying to squeeze in appropriate outcomes for each character. But maybe this is just the slow pace of the tropics in the first half compared to the industriousness of America in the second.
As Allende’s tale winds down, Maurice and Rosette are secretly married aboard a ship outside the port of New Orleans. Mixed marriages are not allowed in the United States in the year 1806. Maurice vows to become an Abolitionist while going to college in Boston. Pregnant Rosette stays home and winds up being jailed, then dying during childbirth. Grandma Tété takes on the task of raising the child.
Allende does well with her historical novels, I think, because she is researching her own family tree, her own country’s history, and more realistically, the histories of South and Central America. At some point, there will be a serious movie (not Zorro) incorporating her stoies of the nineteenth century.
Isabel spears a name from a dartboard, a Frenchman, Toulouse Valmorain, who arrives in Haiti in 1770 to take over the family plantation. Clear family bloodlines disappear almost immediately, as in the savage West Indies, the melting pot has begun with colors, creeds, and races all copulating with whomever, or, so it seems, the nearest at hand.
Allende deftly juggles half a dozen story line threads: Toulouse of course, as a plantation owner; his mistress Tété, who is a slave, but a family retainer, not a field worker; and Etienne Relais, a royalist Frenchman, Major of the guard in Haiti. Remember 1793 was the date Marie A. {let-them-eat-cake) was guillotined.
Earlier Isabel has set up Violette Boisier, a courtesan of mixed heritage. It seemed important at that time to keep track of white-black blood mix: half, quarter, eighth,; but also with whom it was mixed: Spanish, French, or English. So, a lot of variations possible and all of them came about.
The great slave rebellion of 1791 marks the midpoint of Allende’s story. The 500,000 slaves on this small island easily fought off the few French regiments and burned all the plantations, driving off the few thousand Europeans.
The focus changes after this revolution to New Orleans. Toulouse Valmorain has sired two children, Maurice, born by Toulouse’s first wife, a Spanish nobelwoman; and Rosette, whose mother was Tété. The novel follows their growing up, intertwined with events in France under Napoléon Bonaparte, like the Louisianna Purchase in 1803. Toulouse builds another sugar plantation. The pace of the book seems hurried in the final pages, trying to squeeze in appropriate outcomes for each character. But maybe this is just the slow pace of the tropics in the first half compared to the industriousness of America in the second.
As Allende’s tale winds down, Maurice and Rosette are secretly married aboard a ship outside the port of New Orleans. Mixed marriages are not allowed in the United States in the year 1806. Maurice vows to become an Abolitionist while going to college in Boston. Pregnant Rosette stays home and winds up being jailed, then dying during childbirth. Grandma Tété takes on the task of raising the child.
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