I really love Isabel Allende's style. The voice she gives to her characters is simply awe-inspiring. She describes people, places, and events without slipping into tedium and can, overall, make any place as real as your own backyard.
This story was peculiar to me. If pressed, I'm not sure I could tell you exactly what it is about. Sure, I could say that it's one woman's journey to find herself. I could tell you that it's about discovering different shades of love or that it's simply a work of historical fiction about the gold rush. But none of those quite covers what this book is.
In the beginning of the book, each chapter almost seems disconnected. We flit from one character to the next, seemingly losing the main character for chapters at a time. While this made each character real and gave them depth, I felt like I wasn't sure what book I was reading at any given point. Was I reading about a woman betrayed by love in her youth in England? Or about the harsh life of a Chinese doctor? Was it about the young man who took a momentous trip on a bet and unwittingly fell in love? What happened to the young woman, Eliza, the supposed main character of the book? Some times she seemed lost in the sea of characters.
Three quarters of the way through the book I began to worry that nothing was going to happen. By the end of the book I realized that a lot had, in fact, happened and there was no disappointment at all. There didn't seem to be a climax to the story - not in the traditional sense and maybe that was my real issue all along. There were plenty of conflicts and resolutions, lots of things that happened - but not much of a climax. And while I wouldn't consider this to be my favorite of Allende's novels, this will not stop me from recommending it to others.
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