Portrait in Sepia

This epic novel sweeps across time and the Americas, keeping the listener riveted every step of the way. Blair Brown, a natural narrator, gives an ideal performance as she relates the tale of Aurora del Valle, a young woman who tries to reassemble her past in order to face the future. The story begins essentially two generations earlier, with characters who journey from Chile to San Francisco and back again. The listener meets endearing, engaging, and unique characters who all play a role in Aurora's upbringing. Brown captures the humor, tragedy, and drama of the novel with great style, mastering the wide variety of accents without intruding on the story. This audiobook is a wonderful package--an engrossing novel read by a master performer! L.B.F. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

Starred review from July 16, 2001
In this third work concerning the various and intertwining lives of members of a Chilean family, Allende uses the metaphor of photography as memory. "Each of us chooses the tone for telling his or her own story; I would like to choose the durable clarity of a platinum print, but nothing in my destiny possesses that luminosity. I live among diffuse shadings, veiled mysteries, uncertainties; the tone for telling my life is closer to that of a portrait in sepia," declares Aurora del Valle, protagonist of the tale. Here, Allende picks up where 1999's Daughter of Fortune
left off, and, in the course of her chronicles, mentions personages who were realized in her 1987 masterpiece, House of the Spirits. Like her other novels, Portrait in Sepia
spans nearly 50 years and covers wars, love affairs, births, weddings and funerals. Rich and complex, this international, turn-of-the-century saga does not disappoint. The book opens as 30-year-old Aurora remembers her own birth, in the Chinatown of 1880 San Francisco. She tells of those present: her maternal, Chilean-English grandmother, Eliza; her grandfather Tao (a Chinese medic); and her mother, Lynn, a beloved beauty who dies during Aurora's birth. Realizing she is getting ahead of herself, Aurora backtracks, inviting the reader to be patient and listen to the events surrounding her life, from 1862 to 1910. Through Aurora, Allende exercises her supreme storytelling abilities, of which strong, passionate characters are paramount. Most memorable is Aurora's paternal grandmother, Paulina del Valle, an enormous woman who eats pastries and runs her trading company with equally reckless abandon. Like Paulina, Allende attacks her subject with gusto, making this a grand installment in an already impressive repertoire. Major ad/promo; 7-city author tour.