SOURCE: Mujica, Barbara. “On the Light and Dark Side.” Americas 42, no. 5 (September-October 1990): 60-1.

In the following review of The Stories of Eva Luna, Mujica praises Allende for her strong female characters and psychological insight.

Cuentos de Eva Luna (The Stories of Eva Luna) shows us Isabel Allende at her best. The twenty-three tales that compose the collection present a plethora of fascinating, robust characters, some of which appeared in Allende's 1987 novel Eva Luna.

The Chilean author presents her stories through the age-old device used by Scheherazade: the narrator tells them to her lover to entertain him. Like the famous Arabic tales, these stories combine fantasy with biting social satire and psychological insight. Critics have labeled this mixture of the imaginary and the socially and politically authentic “magical realism,” and indeed, Allende's stories fit perfectly into this category. However, the author enriches the genre popularized by Carlos Fuentes and...