Eva Luna, Isabel Allende, Franklin Library, 1988, Signed, First Edition
Item History & Price
Attention all Isabelle Allende fans! And friends of those fans (this would make a memorable gift)!
One of the most beautiful Franklin Library books that I've seen; part of the Signed First Edition Society series. Rich red-brown leather binding with raised spine bands, marbled endpapers, silk ribbon.
From a review in the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/books/1989/apr/05/isabelallende.fiction):
"Eva Luna, her new novel, contains many of the ingredients that made... the first one so pleasurable: vibrant, colourful characters; the ordinary fused with the grotesque; a Latin American setting, tropical this time; vivid, elegant narrative. The narrator, Eva Luna, is herself a story-teller in the Allende tradition. What we learn about her is only through the stories she tells of those in her life. The book can be read on several levels. It could be the soap opera that Eva Luna is writing; some passages are kitsch in the style of the Latin American soaps that saturate the radio and television. It could be her autobiography. It could also be the story that she is inventing about her own life. At one point she says: 'I write as I would like the world to be.' And the ending is ambivalent; is it invented or is it real? 'In a way, she transforms reality, and that's what the book is about, ' explains Isabel Allende. 'How you can take a plain, maybe painful, life and paint it in bright colours. It's about story-telling and being a woman. I've been a story-teller all my life but I realised it only recently. I have been a woman for 46 years and I only recently realised I can't change it and I like it. 'I wrote Eva Luna out of pure celebration of life. I enjoyed every line of it. It was not a happy time in my life. I had just divorced my husband after 25 years and this book gave me all the joy I was needing.'"BC10/LH
One of the most beautiful Franklin Library books that I've seen; part of the Signed First Edition Society series. Rich red-brown leather binding with raised spine bands, marbled endpapers, silk ribbon.
From a review in the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/books/1989/apr/05/isabelallende.fiction):
"Eva Luna, her new novel, contains many of the ingredients that made... the first one so pleasurable: vibrant, colourful characters; the ordinary fused with the grotesque; a Latin American setting, tropical this time; vivid, elegant narrative. The narrator, Eva Luna, is herself a story-teller in the Allende tradition. What we learn about her is only through the stories she tells of those in her life. The book can be read on several levels. It could be the soap opera that Eva Luna is writing; some passages are kitsch in the style of the Latin American soaps that saturate the radio and television. It could be her autobiography. It could also be the story that she is inventing about her own life. At one point she says: 'I write as I would like the world to be.' And the ending is ambivalent; is it invented or is it real? 'In a way, she transforms reality, and that's what the book is about, ' explains Isabel Allende. 'How you can take a plain, maybe painful, life and paint it in bright colours. It's about story-telling and being a woman. I've been a story-teller all my life but I realised it only recently. I have been a woman for 46 years and I only recently realised I can't change it and I like it. 'I wrote Eva Luna out of pure celebration of life. I enjoyed every line of it. It was not a happy time in my life. I had just divorced my husband after 25 years and this book gave me all the joy I was needing.'"BC10/LH
