“The House of the Spirits” by Isabel Allende is a complex and convoluted fiction story about Clara. The book starts off strong with the Valle family being kicked out of the Church because of their youngest child being accused of being possessed by the devil. Valle is a rich family with an interesting set of children. Clara is the youngest; the one who was kicked out of the church. Nivea is intelligent. The oldest is Rosa; the beauty of the family. Clara is given a dog, Barrabas, by her Uncle Marcos. She guesses about her brother's accidents which scares her. Meanwhile, Rosa gets poisoned and dies instead of her father which also scares Clara into a muted state. Nine years later, Esteban strikes it rich in the mines by exploiting local peasants. He also uses the girls in those families for perhaps not the best intentions. Clara then engages with Esteban then they move into a large house Esteban built. Clara and Eseban’s first child, Blanca, is born. Blanca falls in love with Pedro Tercero. Clara has Jaime and Nicolas, twins. Clara’s parents are killed the day before those twins were born. Clara goes to try to find her mother’s lost head but when she finds it she goes into labor. Over time, Ferula starts to have feelings for Clara. Ferula and Esteban build a rivalry over Clara’s love. This story goes on and on about Blanca’s affections and so on but this story is a tangled mess of love triangles, complications and misunderstandings. I had to go back over chapters just trying to understand what story the author is trying to create. Perhaps this book wasn't meant for me since I can’t comprehend intricate storylines. It is useful to have some sort of summary on hand for this book since you start to forget the characters and what happened to them. I placed this book at a 3 out of ten since it honestly lost me halfway though the book. The author could have organized the book in parts talking about the main characters’ story lines on its own, instead of organizing the story by time. In the end, this book was not a fit for me and I wouldn’t recommend it for beginner readers.
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