Having loved her memoir of Chile, My Invented Country, I was looking forward to A Long Petal of the Sea as it promised to be an evocative account of Spanish refugees in Chile. When I was in middle-grade I fell in love with her Eagle and Jaguar series and in the years since I’ve enjoyed other novels by her. Nayna turned to her clients via crowdfunding and has raised ⅓ of the amount needed but they need more.Isabel Allende is one of my all time favourite writers. However Hope has suffered a knock-back with a major investor pulling out. Consequently she has gained loyal clients who just can’t wait to see the next Hope collection. She has helped so many women regain their confidence with clothes that enhance their body shapes. She understands older women and how they want to still be seen and look stylish. We have become friends with Nayna and her team and have loved what she has done with this brand. Over the past 8 years we have often featured Hope Fashion in our fashion posts.
The title of the book,, A Long Petal of the Sea, is a line from one of Neruda’s poems. Sadly Victor died aged 103, 6 days before she sent him the finished manuscript. It was this Victor that helped Isabel with the novel by telling her his story and so she combines these historical facts within her own novel. However, she then met one of the passengers in Venezuela, called Victor, who lived in Chile for thirty-four years until he became a political refugee as did Isabel Allende, after Chile’s military coup in 1973. Isabel Allende’s grandfather was one of those that welcomed the immigrants to Chile so she heard the story as she grew up. They were resilient in spirit and strong in body as they overcame their past and only looked forward. However, as with all wars, this is a story of hope as friends and families manage to find each other. Chilen poet, Pablo Neruda commissioned an old cargo ship – the Winnipeg – and transported two thousand people to Chile where it docked on the day war broke out in Europe. Half a million refugees escaped Franco by walking from Spain to France where they were held in concentration camps by French authorities. As with any story about the war there are no winners and there is so much sorrow and violence. There, they find themselves enmeshed in a rich web of characters who come together in love and tragedy over the course of four generations, destined to witness the battle between freedom and repression as it plays out across the world. Together with his sister-in-law, he is forced out of his beloved Barcelona and into exile in Chile. The story centres around Victor Dalmau, a young doctor when he is caught up in the Spanish Civil War, a tragedy that leaves his life – and the fate of his country – forever changed.
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