THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS by Isabel Allende

Here is a book packed with all sorts of things.  It tells the story of three generations of a family in an unnamed South American country (i.e., Chile).  It is packed with incident.  Take this account of the pets:

Among that entire domestic fauna, the only one to have any importance in the collective memory of the family was a rabbit Miguel had once brought home, a poor ordinary rabbit that the dogs had constantly licked until all its hair fell out and it became the only bald member of its species, boasting an iridescent coat that gave it the appearance of a large-eared reptile.

The rabbit is never mentioned again.  Also why were the dogs licking it so much? No one knows.  The book is full of stuff like this.  Someone dies, and here is the response:

“You can bury her now,” I said.  “And while  you’re at it, I added, you might as well bury my mother-in-law’s head.  It’s been gathering dust down in the basement since God knows when.”

I mean: ?

It makes for a strangely absorbing, and very dense book, full of characters and ideas.  It covers about a hundred years from the  late 1800s up to a unnamed dictator’s rise (i.e., Pinochet).  From a Zimbabwean perspective, I note once again how glad I am to have only a relatively inefficient dictatorship.  Apparently you can really torture a lot people once you get organized.

It was mostly enjoyable for its lush bizarreness, but I did enjoy this perspective on why it can sometimes be better not to actually get to be with the one you love:

Blanca preferred those furtive hotel rendezvous with her lover to the routine of everyday life, the weariness of marriage and the shared poverty at the end of every month, the bad taste in the mouth on waking up, the tedium of Sundays, and the complaints of old age .  .  . Perhaps she feared the grandiose love that had stood so many tests would not be able to withstand the most dreadful test of all: living together. 

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