Married to facilitate their emigration from Spain as refugees and to ensure that they will be allowed to stay together, Victor and Roser’s lives undergo tremendous trials and momentous upheaval as a result of the political turmoil of Franco’s regime, France’s hostility towards Spanish refugees, and Augusto Pinochet’s military coup in Chile. The novel follows the adventure and romance of Victor Dalmau and his wife, Roser, who carries the child of Victor’s dead brother. The same type of storytelling happens in “A Long Petal of the Sea”: Allende, once again, writes in her typical style - as a narrator, recording a long string of continuous events, and as a historian, gathering scattered details to form a long-winded and tiresome story. It is a protracted endeavor to read a novel that encompasses as much content and seeks to cover as much ground as Allende’s “A Long Petal of the Sea.” Readers of “The House of the Spirits” may remember a novel that tracked generations of women and their countless happenings with a tireless and seemingly never-ending narrative. The novel itself is undeniably brilliant and rich - it is, however, just like “The House of the Spirits,” a war of attrition to read. “A Long Petal of the Sea” follows the Dalmau family and their friends as they travel across the globe, first as refugees departing Spain under Francisco Franco’s regime, then as exiles to Chile and Venezuela. Well-known for her critically acclaimed novel “The House of the Spirits,” Isabel Allende is back with another novel spanning an impressively large geography and time.

A long petal of sea