A Long Petal of the Sea

​Title: A Long Petal of the Sea
Author: Isabel Allende
Publisher:: Bloomsbury
Reviewer:  Beryl Eichenberger
I am a great fan of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda – fuelled by a visit to Chile some 15 years ago and a visit to his quirky ‘ship like’ home in Santiago – and also of Isabel Allende, so her  new book  ‘A Long Petal of the Sea’ immediately captivated me.  The title is a Neruda quote (his description of Chile) and throughout the book, chapters open with another appropriate quote.  But the significance of these references  are 

strengthened by the part that Neruda played in rescuing refugees from the aftermath of the Spanish Civil war in 1939 after The Fascist and Franco’s rise to power.
Allende is the consummate storyteller grasping the reader from page one. ‘This is a story of displacement and loss, of sorrow and hope, of a couple trying to find their place in a world in shambles, torn apart by violence’ – she says in the Foreword.   And those words set the scene for a story that grips and engrosses, tossing emotions high and low and finally bringing some peace to the protagonists, Victor and Roser.  
1938 and the Civil War is raging in Spain – the young, quiet, medical auxiliary Victor Dalmau is working at the field hospital on the frontline close to Barcelona, his home town. His brother Guillem is a born fighter and is at the Madrid front while mother Carme remains at the family home with Roser  Bruguera, the talented young pianist to whom they had given a home and was a student of Carme’s husband Professor Marcel Lluis Dalmau. As the civil war gains momentum and defeat is imminent for the Republicans, a fate of murder, incarceration or torture is a certain future for those not supporting Fascism and Franco. The now widowed Carme and Roser, pregnant with Guillem’s  child have to join the massive exodus fleeing their beloved Spain to France.  These are the first rich characters that Allende draws with vigour and strength.  Under Allende’s vivid pen the cast grows as we meet the upper class del Solar family in Santiago, Chile who are destined to have a major influence on the Dalmau family’s life and success.
And there are many more such characters, some wonderfully flamboyant, some selfish, many generous, while the selfless doctor Victor remains at its heart. Indelible appearances filled with longing, love and passion. Not least of which is the appearance of Neruda himself.  At the end of 1939 he commissioned the ‘Winnipeg’ to bring two thousand refugees to Chile. Living that journey is the Dalmau family, one of the many groups of exiles. The ship docked on the day war broke out in Europe and the refugees were cast into a new life in Chile.  
Allende’s sweeping narrative spanning four generations follows the lives (and loves) of Victor and Roser as they navigate their convenient marriage into a late blooming love, charts their successes and indomitable sense of survival in a landscape that is ever-changing.
This is a story of relationships borne out of war, of an understanding of what it means to be an exile, of power and the tragedy that it is so often coupled with, of seeking success and love, but mostly it is of finding a sense of place in one’s heart and body. Allende is herself a political refugee having escaped Chile under the Pinochet regime to live in the USA. She writes from the heart as she states in the Foreword ‘Where do I belong? Where are my roots? Is my heart divided or has it just grown bigger?’
And as Victor says as an old man:  ‘The most important events, the ones that determine our fate, are almost completely beyond our control. In my case, when I take stock, I see my life marked by the Spanish Civil War in my youth, and later on by the military coup, by the concentration camps and my exiles. I didn’t choose any of that: it simply happened to me’.
This is a powerful novel that has such resonance in today’s world. What choices are there when a country is at war and humanity is at its lowest ebb. As refugees flee their beloved countries trying to make new lives in different cultures how many really find a sense of place? 
​ends.