I originally heard about this book from Sara on Instagram @fictionmatters, who is an excellent book-stagram follow! She’s also on Substack:
She suggested The House of the Spirits to readers who enjoyed Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, which I read in 2019 and loved.
The House of the Spirits is a big book- 400+ pages in the edition I have from the library. Small print, long chapters, long paragraphs, and a big, ever expanding family drama. It is rich with character detail, and it is not predictable. It is set in Peru, but that setting is a distant backdrop to the setting of the Trueba family. Reading this novel is like meeting them and setting up camp as an invisible observer.
Some of the drama we get to observe and enjoy: many eccentric relatives, young love, a failed chinchilla farm, subtle narrative hints at the future from the narrator, rebellious teens from several generations. There is also just the right amount of magical realism for me- it moves the plot and somehow manages to be believable, despite my not believing in fortune predicting or moving objects with ones’ mind. I’m only half way through but I think this book will stick with me for a long time. Published in 1984, so I know I’m not the only one.