The House of the Spirits

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The House of the Spirits is an 1982 novel, Isabel Allende’s first and most famous novel.

The book deals with the members of the Trueba family, their growth, their rise and eventually their downfall. Esteban Trueba, an ultra-conservative landowner, marries the Cloudcuckoolander Clara del Valle, with who they have three kids, Blanca and the twins Nicolás and Jaime. Trueba builds his fortune through his farm Las Tres Marías, but this, coupled with his political views, throw a few wrenches in the wheels of his family. Drama ensues.

It sounds like your usual family drama. Well, that’s because it is. Of course, all this is analyzed through three generations of Truebas, all this laced with political unrest, an earthquake and a coup d’tat, between other stuff that happen on Chile... er, I mean, some nameless Latin American country.

It spawned a film in 1993, starred by Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Winona Ryder, Antonio Banderas, Vanessa Redgrave and María Conchita Alonso. but we might as well not talk about it.

Tropes used in The House of the Spirits include: