It has been nearly three decades since Isabel Allende’s rebellious novel Of Love and Shadows brought light to “the disappeared” — Chilean insurgents who went missing at the hands of their repressive government.
Of Love and Shadows intimately places readers into lives of witnesses and victims of power who fell into “the hands of the dregs of humanity.”
The disappearance of insurgents orchestrated by Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet in the 1980s set the stage for this tale. The desire to unearth atrocities suffered by the families of “the disappeared” pressed the novel’s main characters into action.
Although Irene Beltran, a journalist, and Francisco Leal, her photographer, come from middle-class families, their social backgrounds are completely different. Irene is engaged to a military man, and her family has a vested interest in maintaining the country’s status quo. Francisco comes from a lineage exiled from Spain, so he has rebellion in his blood. The dichotomy struck between the characters’ lives creates the ideal atmosphere for a Shakespearean love story, which allows Allende to simultaneously scrutinize Chilean political affairs in the 1980s.
After Irene and Francisco go to the city morgue looking for the body of a “disappeared,” they discover the magnitude of the brutality inflicted on ordinary citizens.
“An air of hopelessness pervaded the building, and all who worked there were contaminated by indifference, their capacity for compassion drained. The attendants performed their duties handling death like banal merchandise; they lived so close to the dead that they had forgotten life,” Allende writes.
Readers become aware of the dismay and sadness penetrating the backdrop in “Of Love and Shadows.” In the face of death and destruction, Allende creates the ideal template for love as she writes:
“After they left the Morgue, Francisco felt that only the thick green of the park, the moist earth, and the smell of humus could help Irene forget the silent cries of all those dead … The passage of time, the southern breeze, the murmuring water, the wild canaries, the earth fragrances slowly brought them back to reality.”
Through the romance that grows between Irene and Francisco, Allende argues that people with traditional beliefs can not only get along with those who are progressive, they can trust and care for one another.
Twenty-eight years after “Of Love and Shadows” hit the bookshelves, the tender love shared by Irene and Francisco has not lost its ability to convey a criticism still relevant today.
Allende has written 19 novels, most recently publishing “Maya’s Notebook” in 2011.
Juan”s Book Review
