SOURCE: "Fish Fall from the Sky for a Reason," in The New York Times Book Review, January 20, 1991, p. 13.

Kingsolver is an American novelist, short story writer, nonfiction writer, and poet. In the review below, she discusses the plots of various stories in The Stories of Eva Luna, calling them "miracles of construction."

In years past, I've received and given out this common advice for writers: Let your novel's important characters dictate their life stories to you, beginning with childhood; write it all down; then throw it away and start the novel. The Chilean novelist Isabel Allende has now gone one better by having one of her characters write a book. Fortunately for her readers, she didn't throw it away but sent it off to her publisher.

The Stories of Eva Luna are ostensibly tales told by the eponymous heroine of Ms. Allende's third novel to her lover, Rolf...