La Ciudad de las Bestias (City of the Beasts) by Isabel Allende is a passionate narrative for young adults in which reality and fiction, myth and fantasy coexist. The intricate and little known Amazonian jungle and the legendary city of El Dorado are the lush scenarios in which this magnificent and mysterious story unfolds.
The reader immerses in the story and is able to feel it intensely despite a few flaws. In the passages in which Allende lets her imagination fly, the result is breathtaking, not so in the passages in which the children encounter and visit the tribe, for Allende emphasizes anthropology and natural history as if it were a lecture; in other words, the flow and freshness of the plot up to that point are interrupted.
In my opinion, the narrative would have benefited more if conservationist messages had been avoided, but the story is very good regardless.
La Ciudad de las Bestias (City of the Beasts) is the first novel written by Isabel Allende that I read, though I’m sure it won’t be the last. I had hesitated in tackling one of her books because her fame precedes her and I thought I could be disappointed; fortunately that wasn’t the case at all. She deserves all the accolades.
Reread 2021: you know that great feeling of rereading a childhood favourite and finding it actually manages to hold up to your memories? Yeah, well: this didn’t…
For nostalgias sake I’m keeping it at 4/5 stars because I have wonderful memories of reading this with my mum when I was about 10, but really: this doesn’t age well.
———————————————————————————
Summer, my tiny hometown in the Netherlands, quite some years ago…
I had come to the library with purpose today. The scrunched up piece of paper with recommendations in my mom’s crooked handwriting in hand, I entered the building.
I had always known this day would come, but never thought it’d come so soon. I take the right turn, where I have always taken the left, half expecting to hear someone ask me: “are you lost little girl”. But I am not lost. I stand at the threshold, and open a door I have never been able to close ever since.
I loosed a breath I didn’t know I was holding. An endless labyrinth of shelfs lie before me. I am simultaneously intimidated and in awe.
10 minutes later I emerge from the labyrinth, the book from my piece of paper in hand. But I know in that moment that I will return here often. This is my new home: The Adult-section.
I do hope you enjoyed that piece of melodrama… Seriously though, when you are a kid, going to the adult section for the first time seems like a big deal. The first time I went there was for this book. Nowadays, this book would be appropriately shelved as YA, and my mom knew this when she recommended this to me (Don’t worry, she didn’t send her child out to fetch 50-shades of erotica or some traumatizing horror-book). However, this was the zeros and small-town libraries in the Netherlands where blissfully ignorant of the existence of such rebellious new genres.
To prevent this review from becoming a novel in itself, I will get to the book now. I really had a great time with it, and with the entire trilogy for that matter. I loved the setting, the writing, I loved the hint of magic, and loved the character (especially grandma).
It stands the test of time decently, but probably not as much as some other YA/in between books. If I were to read it for the first time now, I’m not sure I would love it as much as back then.
To come back to the start of my review: before you get into this book, you should know that this book was mis-marketed in my opinion (at least it was in the Netherlands). It’s very different from anything you know from Isabel Allende. The target audience should definitely be the younger end of YA. Teens and pre-teens, which was me when I read this for the first time.
It won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, but I still feel it does deserve a bit more love and attention than it has gotten so far.
<p><strong>Isabel Allende</strong> nació en 1942, en Perú, pasó la primera infancia en Chile y vivió en varios lugares en su adolescencia y juventud. Después del golpe militar de 1973 en Chile se exilió en Venezuela y a partir de 1987 vive como inmigrante en California. Se define como «eterna extranjera». Inició su carrera literaria en el periodismo, en Chile y en Venezuela. En 1982 su primera novela, <em>La casa de los espíritus</em>, se convirtió en uno de los títulos míticos de la literatura latinoamericana. A ella le siguieron otros muchos, todos los cuales han sido éxitos internacionales. Su obra ha sido traducida a cuarenta idiomas y ha vendido más de setenta millones de ejemplares, siendo la escritora más vendida en lengua española. Ha recibido más de sesenta premios internacionales, entre ellos el Premio Nacional de Literatura de Chile en 2010, el Premio Hans Christian Andersen en Dinamarca, en 2012, por su trilogía «Memorias del Águila y del Jaguar» y la Medalla de la Libertad en los Estados Unidos, la más alta distinción civil, en 2014. En 2018, Isabel Allende se convirtió en la primera escritora en lengua española premiada con la medalla de honor del National Book Award, en los Estados Unidos por su gran aporte al mundo de las letras.</p>
<p><strong>Isabel Allende</strong> nació en 1942, en Perú, pasó la primera infancia en Chile y vivió en varios lugares en su adolescencia y juventud. Después del golpe militar de 1973 en Chile se exilió en Venezuela y a partir de 1987 vive como inmigrante en California. Se define como «eterna extranjera». Inició su carrera literaria en el periodismo, en Chile y en Venezuela. En 1982 su primera novela, <em>La casa de los espíritus</em>, se convirtió en uno de los títulos míticos de la literatura latinoamericana. A ella le siguieron otros muchos, todos los cuales han sido éxitos internacionales. Su obra ha sido traducida a cuarenta idiomas y ha vendido más de setenta millones de ejemplares, siendo la escritora más vendida en lengua española. Ha recibido más de sesenta premios internacionales, entre ellos el Premio Nacional de Literatura de Chile en 2010, el Premio Hans Christian Andersen en Dinamarca, en 2012, por su trilogía «Memorias del Águila y del Jaguar» y la Medalla de la Libertad en los Estados Unidos, la más alta distinción civil, en 2014. En 2018, Isabel Allende se convirtió en la primera escritora en lengua española premiada con la medalla de honor del National Book Award, en los Estados Unidos por su gran aporte al mundo de las letras.</p>
