CHICAGO TRIBUNE - October 9, 1988

Sumptuously surreal Isabel Allende creates a novel with a touch of magic
By Elizabeth Benedict

Eva Luna is the fiesty narrator of Isabel Allende's sumptuous, picaresque third novel - a tale that spans 40 years and moves from a surreal jungle to a modern-day urban capital where even the most apolitical are driven to risky antigovernment activities.

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - October 9, 1988

Teller of a Thousand and One Tales
By Thomas Christensen

EvaÕs stories are more powerful than the twisted creations of others because they are truer and more beautiful.

MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL - October 30, 1988

Eva LunaÕs discoveries are our joys
By Cory Mesler

Eva Luna is a cornucopia of stories, a tightly concocted, seemingly effortless spilling forth of incident and accident, autobiography and fantasy.

This novel is a tapestry, a rich web of whimsy. At times it is Dickensian in its interplay of characters and evocation of the street life of a bustling city. Eva LunaÕs journey is an agreeable delight.

SB NEWSPRESS - November 4, 1988

Review: Magic realism gives voice to silent souls
By Marta A. Navarro

Reading “Eva Luna” is as enjoyable as it is stimulating. Allende proves once again her ability to combine the political and the personal with tragedy, creativity and wit.

THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER - November 27, 1988
By Ann Kolson

Novelist Isabel Allende rearranges reality with a blend of memories, mysticism and imagination. She invents characters caught between fact and fantasy.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE - December 1988
By Elizabeth Benedict

“Sumptuous, large, busy, full of feeling, incident and rich detail... Her humor can be endearingly ironic.”

THE WASHINGTON POST - December 1988
By Alan Ryan

“A remarkable novel, one in which a cascade of stories tumbles our before the reader, stories vivid and passionate and human... A beautiful translation catches the memorable voice of a smart, tough, and independent woman... Reading this novel is like asking your favorite storyteller to tell you a story and getting a hundred stories!”

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY - December 1988
Isabel AllendeÕs pages glow with pleasure in mere act of writing
By Jane St. Anthony

“Wonderful, crammed with the strange and fantastical, the sensuous and the erotic. [It] also speaks powerfully in the cause of freedom.”

Isabel AllendeÕs singular, powerful voice already has been established. If "The House of The Spirits" hadnÕt been written before “Eva Luna,” this question couldnÕt be asked: Where do you go when you start at the top?

FINANCIAL TIMES - March 18, 1989

Fairy tales of a girl of fortune
By Robert Graham

Here is a finely-woven tale that combines, in a distinctly Latin American context, the fairy-tale quality of the Arabian Nights with the picaresque adventures of a Tom Jones. This novel confirms Isabel AllendeÕs reputation as Latin AmericaÕs foremost female writer, even if she now observes her continent from the comfort of California.

TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT - July 4, 1989

Woman and Guerrilla
By Abigail E. Lee

Eva Luna is an accomplished novel, skillfully blending humour and pathos; its womanÕs perspective on Latin America is a refreshing one, but it is enjoyable above all for its sensitivity and charm.

HAM & HIGH - July 4, 1989

All of life preserved
By Alice Thompson

EVA LUNA is a prolonged and tantalizing seduction of the imagination. The novelÕs mix of myth and politics conveys the stuff of life.

GLASGOW HERALD

Snake bite
By Ian Bell

First, novels like Eva Luna display a straightforward, if voracious, appetite for story-telling of the oldest sort.

Eva herself is that rare thing: an original and memorable character with dimensions greater than those managed by most “real” people. The same distinction applies to Allende.

EX LIBRIS

Creative Power Brings ÔEvaÕ Out
By Beverly Hanly

In Eva Luna, the celebration of a storyteller echoes the story of Allende herself as she has mesmerized the world with books translated into almost every language in the western cultures.