Reviewed by Clare Brook
My Name is Emilia Del Valle is the latest historical-fiction novel by Isabel Allende set in nineteenth century Chile. Written in the first person, it reads like a memoir. However, Emilia del Valle is a fictional character who is determined to overcome her impoverished background and the societal conventions of the time to become a journalist. Whereas our protagonist is fictional, the era is a well-researched slice of Chilean history. This is a well-trodden theme that Allende revisits in her novels – a nostalgic historical pictorial of Chile populated by brave female protagonists who triumph over the preferred social norms of the patriarchy. Clearly a winning theme as Allende has sold 77 million books. It would be a brave publisher that suggested she shift her focus.
The novel begins in San Franscisco where Emilia is born. Gonzalo Andres del Valle, her aristocratic father, seduced and then abandoned her pregnant mother; but a kind educator, Francisco Claro, marries her and becomes Emilia’s stepfather. Under his guidance Emilia hones her talent as a writer, publishing dime novels as Brandon J. Price. This leads to a position as journalist at San Franscico’s The Examiner where she meets Eric Whelan. They are both sent to cover the 1891 Chilean Civil War. While in Chile, Emilia is determined to trace her ancestry, hopefully meeting her father.
Allende’s depiction of Emilia’s experience of war is pitched at a believable level.
I no longer know what I witnessed and how much I only imagined; it is all a jumbled confusion of horror in my memory. I had never seen violence and death up close–nothing in my twenty-five years of existence had prepared me for so much barbarism, so much suffering.
Emilia asks herself: What fatal madness do we carry in our soul? That propensity toward destruction is the original sin.
Eric is compelled to report one battle at close quarters. This is written in third person, somewhat jarring as up until this point it has been first person perspective.
Eric’s good sense ordered him to seek shelter – this was not his war, he was only there to report on it – but he seemed to have been infected by the other men’s blind rage, feeling a violent comradery that he was willing to kill and die for, the warrior or hunter’s instinct. He ripped the rifle from the hands of a dead soldier and continued advancing alongside the other men.
As seen above, Allende successfully illustrates the barbaric aspects of war, although there is little commentary concerning democratic politics, or the suffering of the lower classes. However, the generosity of spirit shown by the Indigenous Chileans living in remoter parts acts as a potent comparison to the brutality of the war going on in the cities.
When Emilia, subsequently followed by Eric, attempts the perilous journey to her land in remote southern Chile, Allende evokes an other-worldliness to the setting.
… I was in an enchanted world, a Garden of Eden that persists like an eternal dream in humanity’s collective memory.
The pure, crisp air like crystal that seeps into every corner of the body and soul, rinsing clean the secret pathways of the veins and thoughts.
The compassion of the indigenous people saving Emilia when she was near death:
…reaching the very edge of death and even peering over onto the other side, but that a machi had arrived from far away to heal her with herbs, rituals, and chants.
The mystique that Allende infuses into the Chilean landscape and its Indigenous people makes this novel a pleasurable read.
by Isabel Allende
(2025)
Bloomsbury
Paperback
ISBN: 978 1 526687 65 4
$29.69; 304pp