《幽灵之家》书评

对魔幻现实主义死心塌地

Isabel Allende, the granddaughter of the former Chilean president, wrote "the House of the Spirit" originally as a memoir for his grandpa. It is a family saga, a life long memory, and a master piece of magical realism. What is Magical Realism? If you are familiar with Latin American, you would know its status in their culture. According to Allende, "Magical Realism is the capacity to perceive the world in multiple dimensions" of passion, fear, mystery and dreams. In literature, it is demonstrated as the wild imagination and the supernatural power (like Clara's ability to predict the future and the ghost of Ferula and the creatures that don't exist). The novel itself is a page turner. I read it in a literature class, and was attracted to it on the first page. The book possesses something fresh, a story that has never been told before, and in a way that I felt deeply sympathetic towards the misery of the protagonist. In the light of the family epic, "the micro world of the family reflect the macro world of the Chile at the time," when half of population in Latin American lived under dictatorship. However anything that suppress the magical side of things and freedom of imagination wouldn't survive in Latin America-- the dictators forgot about that.