Violet

Product Information

Violet appears in The Witches, where she was putting already chewed pieces of the chewing gum on the buttons inside of an elevator to annoy people, and accidently revealed that the Witches aren't regular people. Overall, I’ve read most of Isabel Allende’s books and in my opinion she’s one of the best authors around as she never fails to take me on a literary journey. This one is spellbinding, captivating and absorbing and is storytelling at its best. What a beautiful cover too, matching the contents.

As only his second published novel, Violet is quite simply masterful. I dug everything about this book from the details to the characters, and of course the plot that sunk its hooks in me and didn’t let go. I never connected with the main character. When ever I am watching a horror movie about the paranormal or supernatural and one of the first things the main character does is pop pills I say. "Oh great! Everyone is going to wonder if it in her head or not?" Our character here pops pills, but they are prescribed, so that is ok. (Wink, wink!) The other thing is, how many times does a kid have to say "We" when she is playing by herself before mom gets the hint?

There are lots of things to like about this book. I didn’t realise as I read it but it has a large family connection with the author and is basically a fictionalised version of her father’s story. Learning this after reading increases the emotional impact of the book. I also thought the detail around women’s bodies, which might be referred to as “unflinching” (because childbirth is not a tidy experience!) added to the book’s power: I know from talking to my own mother that things like this were often kept hidden at the time in which the book is set so it’s interesting to read a book that is more open about that kind of thing. The way the two stories play against each other and gradually merge makes for a well-observed study of motherhood. And I found that the poetry enhanced the book. It’s a fine line with historical fiction between making us truly see the time and place rather than just telling the reader. Allende walks that line, doing a fabulous balancing act.

Secondly, in its nuanced exploration of motherhood. A view informed by the author’s own experience (starting after the birth of her first child in 2014 and finished after the birth of, I think, her fourth in 2021), but also by her research and teaching specialty on gender and “the ways in which women’s productive and reproductive labour is incorporated into nation-building projects through the institutions of marriage and the family.” – not just through the two main characters but by other characters around them including friends and fellow hospital-internees, we see various aspects of societal expectations around pregnancy during and after the second world war. The covers for the Scarlet Book and the Violet Book serve as a basis for the covers of the official Japanese Pokémon Scarlet and Violet art books. [1]Violeta del Valle was born in Chile during the Spanish Flu pandemic and she dies during the Coronavirus pandemic, but what an incredible life she lives between them! This work of historical fiction reads much like an actual memoir, written by Violeta in a long letter to her beloved grandson, Camilo. In it she details a life that sees prosperity and ruin due to the Great Depression, re-forging her own prosperity in a time where society frowned on women in business, marriages and affairs that range from sedate to tempestuous, the joys and sorrows of motherhood, war in the world at large and political upheaval and danger in her own country, a plethora of social issues, and ultimately finding new purpose in her later years.