SOURCE: Graham, Philip. “A Less Magical Realism.” New Leader 84, no. 6 (November-December 2001): 38-9.

In the following review, Graham finds the plot of Portrait in Sepia formulaic and predictable, but appreciates its perspectives on the human struggle to live and love.

On the first page of Isabel Allende's latest novel, narrator Aurcra del Valle warns the reader: “This is a long story, and it begins before my birth; it requires patience in the telling and even more in the listening. If I lose the thread along the way, don't despair, because you can count on picking it up a few pages further on.” The promised “few pages” expand to nearly 100, though, before Aurora finally tells of her birth—marked by the death of her mother, Lynn Sommers, and abandonment by her father, Matias del Valle.

Aurora's maternal grandparents, Eliza Sommers and Tao Chi'en, care for her in San Francisco until...