Allende's 'A Long Petal of the Sea' (2020)

“Be careful, Victor, success is intoxicating you. Remember life has many peaks and troughs,” Roser warned him

A fictionalised retelling of true events, Allende brings her seamless and expansive storytelling to the plight of refugees who fled the carnage of the Spanish Civil War to Chile. Or as poet Pablo Neruda called that narrow country, 'that long petal of the sea'. Scattered through with Neruda's gentle verses, Allende has crafted a compelling tale of exile, resilience and how one finds belonging in a foreign land.

It opens with a haunting and unforgettable image: that of a war medic, Victor Dalmau, on seeing the exposed heart of a young soldier among of the wounded, reaches behind a stranger's ribs to squeeze that vital organ, to force a life beat back into his body. By a miracle, the soldier survives. Elsewhere in a battlefield, Victor's brother dies, leaving a pianist back home pregnant with his child. Together, Victor and Roser must flee to survive.

The novel moves from tragedy to tragedy, from dictatorship to dictatorship - from Franco's brutal victory to refugee camps on French beaches, to the concentration camps under Pinochet's Chile, from the ruins of Madrid to the slums of Santiago. It's a lot of ground. But with Allende as guide, it's an effortless journey. She has deft control of a narrative that crosses continents and decades, without sacrificing the intimate details that give it flavour and colour. Her chapters slip from the blood and shit of the battle field to lovers in clandestine motel rooms; from the blasts of bullets to the art of cooking arròs negre. She intertwines the grand narrative of the Winnipeg refugees with the lives of Chilean high society. Without losing sight of the individual lives tangled up in historical upheaval, Allende tells a sweeping tale of displacement and home, loss and found. Each character is a thread with which she creates a sumptuous tapestry of a turbulent time.

Throughout, we feel that Allende is intimately familiar with all the inevitabilities of life: love, loss and hope; class, religion and politics. Inextricable from the misery and despair is the stubbornness of survival. Right alongside the relentlessness of life's misfortunes, there are the staples of family and community. Ultimately A Long Petal of the Sea is a testament to the endurance of the human spirit.

Allende writes as one who has lived and understands the undulations of life. She treats her characters graciously, without judgement. Through them, we have a grander understanding of the unpredictability of life. We are comforted by the resilience of those who have come before us. We are more equipped for the uncertainty of our own lives.