Madison Smartt Bell’s trilogies of novels are a more accurate portrayal of the Revolution and the culture of the black slaves of Haiti. Unfortunately, if one is looking for painstakingly researched historical fiction set in the midst of the Haitian Revolution, Allende’s novel is not the ideal choice. Through the lens of Zarite, a mulatto slave from Saint Domingue/Haiti, the historical events and trends of the Haitian Revolution are presented as affecting individual lives. Allende essentially does a similar thing in Island Beneath the Sea.
Using a family as a national allegory for Chile, like Gabriel Garcia Marquez does with the Buendia family in One Hundred Years of Solitude, was a brilliant approach. Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits remains one of my favorite novels.
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