SOURCE: "Escrituras y Escritoras: The Artist-Protagonist of Isabel Allende," in Discurso Literario, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1992, pp. 59-67.

In the essay below, de Carvalho examines the self-exploration of the narrators in Eva Luna and The House of the Spirits.

Isabel Allende has noted that La casa de los espíritus (1982) is the story of her family, or of a family similar to her own. She says that her grandmother was in fact clairvoyant and telekinetic, essentially similar to Clara. It follows, then, that Alba, who turns out to be the narrator, in many ways represents the author herself, the one who consolidates and disseminates the magically real family history. She is the heir to her grandmother's and mother's treasury of stories, which she combines with the equally tragic and fantastic level of her own experience, to produce written literature—to produce, in fact, La casa de los espíritus. Five...