![]() This is trademark Allende - a family saga crowded with brilliant personalities, outlined then coloured in with such artistic care that we can't help but imagine them as drawn from life, even when they are as bizarre as the transported convict turned Jeeves-type butler. ![]() Although she is initially a trivial child, raised in Santiago in nouveau-riche splendour, at 13 she becomes addicted to the new art of photography and so is drawn to accuracy and truth, enabling her in later years to uncover the secret of her loveless marriage, and then to unearth the real tragedy behind her recurrent nightmare. She becomes gradually accustomed to Paulina del Valle's warm, erratic bulk, but is woken at night by dreams of savage children dressed in black and the vague memory of a grotesque stain spreading across the pavement at her feet. Aurora del Valle, bastard daughter of MatÃas del Valle, is hurled unexpectedly at the age of five into the sofa-like bosom of her maternal grandmother, and left there to mature. ![]()
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