Her Fate in His Revolution : EVA LUNA by Isabel Allende; translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden (Alfred A. Knopf: $18.95; 272 pp.; 0-394-57273-4)
February 05, 1989|Elena Brunet and Brunet, who writes The Times' Current Paperbacks column, translated Manuel Puig's "Pubis Angelical," a novel (Aventura Books / Random House).
This novel is a striking departure for Isabel Allende: not the well-heeled clan of "The House of Spirits," nor the declining gentry of "Of Love and Shadows," but a lone girl's childhood and coming of age. Eva Luna knows her father only as legend; her mother dies when Eva is only 6 years old, leaving her in the hands of a succession of caretakers who nourish and encourage her. It is a picaresque tale of a South American child who likes to tell stories and who grows up to write novels.
"My imagination took wing when I saw that corridor of locked doors," Eva writes, "behind every one I thought I heard whispers, moans, laughter. At first I put my ear to the doors and peeked through the keyholes, but soon I found I did not have to do that to divine the universes hidden there. . . . It took only the slightest effort of imagination to pass through the door and enter the extraordinary stories unfolding on the other side of the walls."
Eva's introduction to politics comes from Huberto Naranjo, a 9-year-old boy who lives on his own and who meets Eva when she first runs away from her housekeeping job. "At 16 he would be the leader of a street gang, feared and respected . . . he would be the hero of the whores in the red-light district, and the nightmare of the guardia. " With his help, Eva lives for some time at the home of one of his friends, a Madam (La Senora) who is forced to flee when the military cracks down on the red-light district.