A Long Petal of the Sea

It was with a good deal of enthusiasm that I began reading A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende. The reasons behind this enthusiasm were threefold:
1)  The novel came highly recommended by someone of whom I have great respect.
2)  The story begins during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, and continues on into the Second World War. Several of the novels I had read without the past 30 days dealt with the terror of living under the Fascists and Nazis of that era and this novel looked to be in my wheelhouse.
3) While researching Isabel Allende, I learned that her writing is considered by many to be in a style known as Magic realism. The Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami is seen as one of the most important authors of this genre, and to have one's name mentioned alongside Haruki Murakami is high praise.

Sadly, I was disappointed in the novel.

Although Allende is critical (and rightly so) of the Fascist General Franco, who was supported by Hitler and Mussolini,  Allende appears to be less than critical of the Spanish Republican army which was being supported by the Soviet Union. As we see with the modern day Antifa movement, being "anti-Fascist" isn't enough. Joseph Stalin was the ultimate anti-Fascist.

Each chapter in the novel starts with a line from the work of Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda - an unapologetic Communist. Allende also praises, through out the novel, her cousin Salvador Allende, the first Marxist to be elected president in a "liberal democracy" in Latin America.

From a political standpoint, Isabel Allende cannot be viewed as an unbiased observer of history.

A Long Petal of the Sea  is, after all an "historical novel", so comparing this work to Haruki Murakami's Magic realism might be a bit unfair. One review called the book "a trifle facile", and wrote "Allende tends to describe emotions and events rather than delve into them, and she paints the historical backdrop in very broad strokes, but she is an engaging storyteller".

More than one reviewer called the storytelling "forced", with much of the story being told, summarized after events have occurred rather than being experienced as they happen. Another reviewer at Goodreads said reading the novel was like reading a newspaper.

Oh, did I fail to mention that the novel is rife with anti-Catholic bigotry? Of course, that's to be expected in a novel in which most of the heroes are Marxists.