Isabel Allende has established herself as one of the most consummate of all modern storytellers, a reputation that is confirmed in her novel Portrait in Sepia. Allende offers a compelling saga of the turbulent history, lives, and loves of late 19th-century Chile, drawing on characters from her earlier novels, The House of Spirits and Daughter of Fortune.

In typical Allende fashion, Portrait in Sepia is crammed with love, desire, tragedy, and dark family secrets, all played out against the dramatic backdrop of revolutionary Chile. Our heroine Aurora del Valle's mother is a Chilean-Chinese beauty, while her father is a dissolute scion of the wealthy and powerful del Valle family. At the heart of Aurora's slow, painful re-creation of her childhood towers one of Allende's greatest fictional creations, the heroine's grandmother, Paulina del Valle. An "astute, bewigged Amazon with a gluttonous appetite," Paulina holds both the del Valle family and Allende's novel together as she presides over Aurora's adolescence in a haze of pastries, taffeta, and overweening love.

One of the most interesting aspects of the novel is Allende's decision to turn her heroine into a photographer: "through photography and the written word I try desperately to conquer the transitory nature of my existence, to trap moments before they evanesce, to untangle the confusion of my past." There is little confusion in Allende's elegantly crafted and hugely enjoyable novel. --Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk


From Publishers Weekly
HIn this third work concerning the various and intertwining lives of members of a Chilean family, Allende uses the metaphor of photography as memory. "Each of us chooses the tone for telling his or her own story; I would like to choose the durable clarity of a platinum print, but nothing in my destiny possesses that luminosity. I live among diffuse shadings, veiled mysteries, uncertainties; the tone for telling my life is closer to that of a portrait in sepia," declares Aurora del Valle, protagonist of the tale. Here, Allende picks up where 1999's Daughter of Fortune left off, and, in the course of her chronicles, mentions personages who were realized in her 1987 masterpiece, House of the Spirits. Like her other novels, Portrait in Sepia spans nearly 50 years and covers wars, love affairs, births, weddings and funerals. Rich and complex, this international, turn-of-the-century saga does not disappoint. The book opens as 30-year-old Aurora remembers her own birth, in the Chinatown of 1880 San Francisco. She tells of those present: her maternal, Chilean-English grandmother, Eliza; her grandfather Tao (a Chinese medic); and her mother, Lynn, a beloved beauty who dies during Aurora's birth. Realizing she is getting ahead of herself, Aurora backtracks, inviting the reader to be patient and listen to the events surrounding her life, from 1862 to 1910. Through Aurora, Allende exercises her supreme storytelling abilities, of which strong, passionate characters are paramount. Most memorable is Aurora's paternal grandmother, Paulina del Valle, an enormous woman who eats pastries and runs her trading company with equally reckless abandon. Like Paulina, Allende attacks her subject with gusto, making this a grand installment in an already impressive repertoire. Major ad/promo; 7-city author tour. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Allende's new novel may center on Aurora de Valle, born in San Francisco's Chinatown and raised in Chile by her domineering grandmother, but it is really a group portrait of three generations of Aurora's family including her grandmother, Eliza Sommers, whom readers will remember from Daughter of Fortune. In fact, though Aurora's squalling birth opens the book, she doesn't figure prominently in the proceedings until about halfway through, when her grandmother gets custody of her and we learn of a trauma that will shape the rest of her life. Aurora is born to Lynn, daughter of Eliza and Chinese physician Tao Ch'en. A gorgeous but slightly dim girl, Lynn has fallen for the son of redoubtable Chilean matriarch Paulina de Valle and gotten herself pregnant. Much woe follows the birth of little Aurora, including the death of her mother and her mysterious kidnapping when she is only a few years old, and plenty of intrigue awaits her in Chile. The result is a polished, charming, if somewhat soap operaish tale that will please Allende fans. For most libraries.- Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal" Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
This epic novel sweeps across time and the Americas, keeping the listener riveted every step of the way. Blair Brown, a natural narrator, gives an ideal performance as she relates the tale of Aurora del Valle, a young woman who tries to reassemble her past in order to face the future. The story begins essentially two generations earlier, with characters who journey from Chile to San Francisco and back again. The listener meets endearing, engaging, and unique characters who all play a role in Aurora's upbringing. Brown captures the humor, tragedy, and drama of the novel with great style, mastering the wide variety of accents without intruding on the story. This audiobook is a wonderful package--an engrossing novel read by a master performer! L.B.F. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
This is a sequel to the author's best-selling and critically applauded Daughter of Fortune (1999), but it falls a little short of attaining that novel's artistry and accessibility. But no book by Allende is anything less than enjoyable. Once again, she artfully and authentically evokes the nineteenth century in her native Chile and in California, her current residence. In Chile, it is a time of economic expansion as well as war. Chile is skirmishing with neighboring Peru and Bolivia and is also enmeshed in civil war. In California, these are the post-gold rush days, and San Francisco teems and thrives. The previous novel introduced readers to Eliza Sommers, who was adopted as a child by two residents of the British colony in the Chilean city of Valparaiso. Raised in privileged circumstances, Eliza nevertheless got pregnant and followed her lover to California. Now, in the sequel, Allende takes up the threads of the story to weave the tale of Aurora del Valle, Eliza's granddaughter. Aurora grew up unclear about certain major details of her life--for instance, the true identity of her father--but eventually the pieces she needs to know to understand her heritage fall into place. Although the plot is not as compelling as in the previous novel, Portrait in Sepia is still an atmospheric, character-rich historical yarn. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Publishers Weekly (* Starred Review *)
"Rich and complex ... Allende exercises her supreme storytelling abilities ... a grand installment in an already impressive repertoire."


Kirkus
"Complex, intriguing, ambitious … it's Allende's remarkable flair for character that makes it all come alive."


San Francisco Chronicle
Portrait in Sepia is rich with color and emotion and packed with intriguing characters.


Book Description
Isabel Allende's sensuous novel about
the mystery of memory

In nineteenth-century Chile, Aurora del Valle suffers a brutal trauma that erases all recollections of the first five years of her life. Raised by her regal and ambitious grandmother Paulina del Valle, Aurora grows up in a privileged environment, but is tormented by horrible nightmares. When she is forced to recognize her betrayal at the hands of the man she loves, and to cope with the resulting solitude, she explores the mystery of her past.


About the Author
Nacida en Perú, Isabel Allende se crió en Chile. Algunos de sus libros, La casa de los espíritus, De amor y sombra, Eva Luna, Cuentos de Eva Luna, El plan infinito, y más recientemente, Paula, raducidos a más de 25 lenguas, encabezan la lista de bestsellers en varios paises de America y Europa. Isabel Allende reside actualmente en California. Born in Peru, Isabel Allende was raised in Chile. She is the author of the novels Portrait in Sepia, Daughter of Fortune, The Infinite Plan, Eva Luna, Of Love and Shadows, and The House of the Spirits, the short story collection The Stories of Eva Luna, the memoir Paula, and Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses. City of the Beast is her first novel for young readers. She lives in California.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Few authors today write with as much exuberance as Isabel Allende. Her books House of the Spirits, Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses, and the phenomenally bestselling Daughter of Fortune are like grapes bursting in your mouth -- sometimes tart, sometimes sweet, always sensual, and unfailingly juicy. Portrait in Sepia, Allende's third book in a loose trilogy about a Chilean extended family in the 19th and 20th centuries, is a full bottle of wine -- warm, robust, and intoxicating -- a mesmerizing bildungsroman of one young woman's journey of self-discovery.

Beautiful, passionate Aurora del Valle is tormented by nightmares from her childhood. The illegitimate grandchild of Paulina del Valle (a strong-willed, fiery Chilean matriarch who publicly humiliates her cheating husband by parading a Florentine bed through the city streets), Aurora begins life in uncertainty -- living with her maternal grandparents, Tao Chi'en and Eliza Sommers (protagonist of Daughter of Fortune) in San Francisco. Tao Chi'en, a well-respected and ardent activist in the community, has made it his life's mission to keep the numerous Chinese girls coming to California from going into prostitution. When a violent episode occurs that shatters the only family she has ever really known, Aurora is sent to live with her hot-blooded but loving grandmother, Paulina. In Chile, Aurora discovers a passion for photography and soon masters the art of looking into her subjects' hearts and souls. Through her craft she discovers love and heartache and confronts the memories she has repressed for so many years.

Passionate, enthralling, and filled with anecdotes and side stories that are more colorful than a Peruvian parrot, Allende's storytelling evokes Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Yet whereas the latter sculpts a world of magic realism, Allende has captured in sepia tones the magical, extraordinary lives and loves of Aurora and her wild family, making them so realistic and familiar that you'll swear they're part of your own family. (Stephen Bloom)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Internationally celebrated novelist Isabel Allende has written a magnificent historical novel set at the end of the nineteenth century in Chile, a marvelous family saga that takes up and continues the story begun in her highly acclaimed Daughter of Fortune.

Recounted in the voice of a young woman in search of her roots, Portrait in Sepia is a novel about memory and family secrets. Aurora del Valle suffers a brutal trauma that shapes her character and erases from her mind all recollection of the first five years of her life. Raised by her ambitious grandmother, the regal and commanding Paulina del Valle, she grows up in a privileged environment, free of the limitations that circumscribe the lives of women at that time, but tormented by horrible nightmares. When she is forced to recognize her betrayal at the hands of the man she loves, and to cope with the resulting solitude, she decides to explore the mystery of her past.

Portrait in Sepia is an extraordinary achievement: richly detailed, epic in scope, intimate in its probing of human character, and thrilling in the way it illuminates the complexity of family ties.

FROM THE CRITICS

Book Magazine

In the opening paragraph of her ninth, exotic book, Isabel Allende issues a warning: "This is a long story," the narrator cautions, "and it begins before my birth; it requires patience in the telling and even more in the listening." No false modesty there. Reading the first several pages of Portrait in Sepia is like watching the ball roll, skitter and drop in a perpetual-motion machine. Courtesans, aristocrats, seafarers, orphans, nephews and grandmothers, not to mention purveyors of erotica, rush tantalizingly by; everything's a scandal. A whorl of place names—San Francisco, Chile, Panama, London, New York, Florence—further threatens all reason and calm. Every tangent leads to at least two more, and it is almost impossible to make a guess at where the story's going. Who is this book about, and why should we care? You can almost hear Allende laughing at her readers' inevitable confusion. But Allende is nothing if not a wholly self-confident spinner of baroquely complicated tales. She has no interest in narrative ease; she prefers, instead, to tantalize and to perform. Portrait in Sepia is, in some ways, a sequel to Allende's Daughter of Fortune, and the author clearly has a lot to say about one spectacularly sprawling, barely legitimate family. She wants her characters to dance out on the stage. Her head is full of gossip, titillation and naughty sex. Ostensibly, Portrait in Sepia is about Aurora del Valle, the granddaughter of the wanderlust-ridden Eliza Sommers, who starred in Daughter of Fortune. To get to Aurora's story, however, we must first go back and find her roots, must learn the sordid details ofher conception and the tragic circumstances of her birth, must meet the maternal grandparents who raise the child until the age of five, must spend time in the company of the paternal grandmother, the fabulous Paulina del Valle, who spirits Aurora away to Valparaiso, Chile, soon after the child is summarily placed in her care. Aurora's first impression of Paulina is fabulously drawn in Allende's coy and captivating style: "Since I saw her so many times in that same chair, it isn't hard to picture how she looked that first day: gowned in a profusion of jewels and enough cloth to curtain a house. Imposing. Beside her, the rest of the world disappeared ... I had never seen a creature of such dimensions, perfectly matched to the size and sumptuousness of her mansion." Practically hurled into the exceptional world of her paternal grandmother, and soon faced with the confusing politics of a restless Chile, Aurora, an easily embarrassed and inherently shy child, suddenly finds herself among dozens of cousins and uncles, aunts and tutors and society do-gooders, not to mention an entire catalog of intrigues. Everyone in this book has a story to tell. Paulina, for her part, remains preposterously oversized—her hairstyle and wardrobe, her work and home, her charity and business propositions. But all the distractions of Paulina's tempestuous household do not prevent Aurora from seeking answers about the mystery of her birth and early years. Paulina has made it her business to eradicate the child's tragic past. Aurora, who suffers from private torments and nightmares, chafes against the obfuscation. Her history is like a mist that she can't quite push through. She turns in all directions, questioning, but no one will yield the slightest answers. Told by both third- and first-person narrators, riddled by countless subplots (many of which are only peripherally linked back to Aurora), the book follows Aurora's maturation from a bewildered child and idiosyncratic young teenager through her unhappy marriage and erotic intrigues. It delves—although not entirely convincingly, and with an uncharacteristically stilted prose—into her passion for photography, a medium that purportedly helps her see and know the world. It explicates (and also sometimes seems to make light of) the civil unrest that churns outside her door. Throughout, plot is rarely the focus; instead, the book is exuberantly and perpetually about people, just as it is exuberantly and perpetually about Allende's high-kicking prose. Allende's imagination is a spectacle unto itself—she infects her readers with her own colossal dreams. The end of Portrait in Sepia, sadly, is a disappointment; the origins of Aurora's disturbing nightmares, while revealed, do not surprise the reader. And Aurora as a young woman never quite springs to life—the final biographical details and intrigues feel tacked on, out of steam, manipulated. But with Portrait in Sepia, Allende proves once again that she is capable of concocting stories of the most vivid and surreal kind, that she is still in the business of teasing, seducing, lusting, shocking. Allende, it seems, has fun when she writes. Her books are effusive and energizing, and therefore fun to read. —Beth Kephart

Publishers Weekly

HIn this third work concerning the various and intertwining lives of members of a Chilean family, Allende uses the metaphor of photography as memory. "Each of us chooses the tone for telling his or her own story; I would like to choose the durable clarity of a platinum print, but nothing in my destiny possesses that luminosity. I live among diffuse shadings, veiled mysteries, uncertainties; the tone for telling my life is closer to that of a portrait in sepia," declares Aurora del Valle, protagonist of the tale. Here, Allende picks up where 1999's Daughter of Fortune left off, and, in the course of her chronicles, mentions personages who were realized in her 1987 masterpiece, House of the Spirits. Like her other novels, Portrait in Sepia spans nearly 50 years and covers wars, love affairs, births, weddings and funerals. Rich and complex, this international, turn-of-the-century saga does not disappoint. The book opens as 30-year-old Aurora remembers her own birth, in the Chinatown of 1880 San Francisco. She tells of those present: her maternal, Chilean-English grandmother, Eliza; her grandfather Tao (a Chinese medic); and her mother, Lynn, a beloved beauty who dies during Aurora's birth. Realizing she is getting ahead of herself, Aurora backtracks, inviting the reader to be patient and listen to the events surrounding her life, from 1862 to 1910. Through Aurora, Allende exercises her supreme storytelling abilities, of which strong, passionate characters are paramount. Most memorable is Aurora's paternal grandmother, Paulina del Valle, an enormous woman who eats pastries and runs her trading company with equally reckless abandon. Like Paulina, Allende attacks her subject with gusto, makingthis a grand installment in an already impressive repertoire. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal