L'Isola sotto il Mare (Island beneath the sea) - Isabel Allende

Emozionante e istruttivo. Credo siano i due aggettivi che meglio qualifichino l'ultimo libro della scrittrice cilena, ambientato nell'america centrale della fine del settecento. Emozionante per come riesce a raccontare le vite dei personaggi che si intersecano in trent'anni di storia, facendo emergere in sottofondo tutta la disumanità dello schiavismo. Istruttivo perchè a me ha dato la conoscenza di un pezzo di storia che normalmente a scuola non si affronta (a malapena ahimè studiamo quella italiana). Ho imparato infatti che lo stato della Luisiana è nato come colonia spagnola, poi è diventato francese e infine è stato venduto agli americani. Ha subito una pesante immigrazione da Haiti in seguito alla cruenta rivolta degli schiavi che ha reso quest'ultima la prima nazione al mondo ad affrancarsi dalla schiavitù e dichiarare l'indipendenza dai colonialisti francesi. In questo contesto ha luogo il riscatto da schiava della protagonista e la sua emancipazione come donna. Rispetto alla Casa degli Spiriti, che è il primo romanzo che ho letto della Allende e che è stato scritto quindici anni prima, ho notato una evoluzione importante. In quest'opera l'autrice ha affrontato tanti temi (il razzismo, lo sfruttamento, l'amore, l'incesto, la maternità, il sentimento religioso cristiano e non) correndo il rischio di essere superficiale ma ha vinto la sfida riuscendo a darne la giusta collocazione nella trama e lo spazio sufficiente a far soffermare il lettore. La qualità della scrittura è migliorata e nel descrivere situazioni e sentimenti ha raggiunto un livello tale da sconfinare spesso nella poesia pura. I personaggi sembrano veri, con la loro ricchezza di sfaccettature e contraddizioni tipiche delle persone reali. Solo in un caso (Jean Martin) si nota una certa approssimazione.
La lettura penso sia quanto di più attuale in questo momento in cui sono tanti i popoli che reclamano libertà e giustizia sociale. La storia dimostra che il potere dittatoriale, di qualsiasi natura, colore, fede, usa mezzi che sono sempre gli stessi per imporsi. Ma l'uomo nasce con una tensione verso certi valori che neanche le repressioni nel sangue riusciranno a soffocare.
Difficile scegliere cosa riportare del libro: andrebbe trascritto interamente. Alla fine ho optato per la più bella, delicata, sensuale descrizione di un incontro d'amore che mi sia mai capitato di leggere. 


Thrilling and informative. I think they are the two adjectives that best qualify the last book of the chilean writer, set in Central America in the late eighteenth century. Thrilling for how it manages to tell the characters' lives in thirty years, revealing in the background all the inhumanity of slavery. Instructive because it gave me the knowledge of a piece of history that normally it does not study at school. I learned that the state of Louisiana was born as a Spanish colony, then become French, and finally sold to the Americans. It had an extensive migration from Haiti following the bloody slave revolt that made it the first nation in the world to free itself from slavery and declare independence from the French colonialists. In this context takes place the redemption and the emancipation of the protagonist. Compared to the House of the Spirits, which is the first Allende novel I've read and was written fifteen years ago, I noticed an important evolution. In this work the author has addressed many issues (racism, exploitation, love, incest, pregnancy, religious sentiment) running the risk of being superficial, but she won the challenge being able to give  enough space giving to the reader the opportunity to focus on the topics. The quality of writing has improved and the description of situations and feelings has reached a level that often becomes pure poetry. The characters seem real, with their wealth of nuances and contradictions typical of real people. Only in one case (Jean Martin) the charachter is not so well studied. The reading I think is topical in a time when many people are clamoring for freedom and social justice. History shows that the dictatorial power of any kind, color, creed, uses always the same ways to prevail. But man is born with a tendency to certain values ​​that not even the bloody repression manages to choke. Difficult to choose a quote of the book: the novel should be transcribed entirely. In the end I opted for the most beautiful, delicate, sensual description of a love meeting that I have ever read.


Violette had learned to please her friends within the stipulated time without giving them the sensation of being rushed. Such coquetry and teasing submission in an adolescent body completely disarmed Relais. Slowly she unwound the long cloth of the turban, which fell to the floor with a tinkling of glass beads, and shook the dark cascade of her mane across her shoulders and back. Her movements were languid, without affectation, with the freshness of a dance. Her breasts had not as yet reached their definitive size, and her nipples lifted the green silk like little pebbles. She was naked beneath the tunic. Relais marveled at that mulatta body, the firm legs with fine ankles, the voluptuous buttocks and thighs, the indented waist, the elegant fingers that curved backward, free of rings. Her laughter began with a mute purring in her belly and gradually rose, crystalline, pealing, to the thrown back head, the bouncing hair, the long, throbbing neck. With a little silver knife Violette cut a piece of mango, avidly popped it into her mouth, and a thread of juice fell on the neck of her gown, damp with sweat and champagne. With a finger she traced the trail of the fruit, a thick amber drop, and rubbed it on Relais's lips as she swung to straddle his legs with the lightness of a cat. The man's face was between breasts smelling of mango. She bent down, enveloping him in her wild hair, kissed him fully on the mouth, and with her tongue passed him the piece of fruit she had bitten off. Relais took the chewed pulp with a shiver of surprise; he had never experienced anything so intimate, so shocking, so marvelous. She licked his chin, took his head in her hands and covered it with quick kisses like bird pecks, on his eyelids, cheeks, lips, neck...playing, laughing. The man clasped her waist and with desperate hands pulled off the tunic, revealing the slim, musk scented girl who yielded, fused, crumbled against the pressed bones and hard muscles of his own body cured by battles and privations. He tried to lift her in his arms to carry her to the bed, which he could see in the next room, but Violette did not give him time; her odalisque's hands opened the heron-painted dressing gown and his trousers; her opulent hips slithered like a knowing snake until she impaled herself upon his rock-hard member with a deep sigh of joy. Etienne Relais felt that he had sunk into a swamp of delectation, without memory or will. He closed his eyes, kissing those succulent lips, savoring the aroma of mango, while his soldier's callused hands stroked the impossible softness of that skin and the abundant wealth of that hair. He thrust into her, abandoning himself to the heat and the savor and the scent of the girl, with the sensation that finally he had found his place in this world after being so long alone and drifting. In only a few minutes he exploded like a stupefied adolescent, with spasmodic bursts and a yell of frustration for not have given her pleasure, for he wanted more than anything in his life to make her love him. Violette waited for him to finish, motionless, wet, panting, mounted on him with her face buried in the hollow of his shoulder, murmuring incomprehensible words. Relais did not know how long they were embraced like that, until he could again breathe normally and emerge a little from the dense fog that enveloped him, then he became aware that he was still inside her, grasped by elastic muscles that were rhythmically massaging him, pressing, releasing. He managed to wonder how that girl had learned the arts of a practiced courtesan before he was lost in the magma of desire and the confusion of his instantaneous love. When Violette felt he was again firm, she wrapped her legs around his waist, crossed her feet behind his back, and gestured toward the other room. Relais carried her in his arms, still clasped on his penis, and fell with her onto the bed, where they could revel as they wished until long into the night, several hours more than Loula had stipulated. The large woman had come in a couple of times, ready to put an end to that overtime, but Violette, moved to see that tough soldier sobbing with love, waved her away without a second thought.

Love, which he had not known before, tossed Etienne Relais about like a tremendous wave, pure energy, salt, and foam. He judged that he could not compete with the girl's other clients, more handsome, powerful, or rich, and so decided at dawn to offer her what few white men would be prepared to give: his name. "Marry me," he said between embraces. Violette sat back on the bed with her legs crossed, her damp hair stuck to her skin, her eyes incandescent, her lips swollen with kisses. Light from remains of the three dying candles that had accompanied their interminable acrobatics fell on her. "I don't have the makings of a wife," she answered, and added that she still had not bled with the cycles of the moon, and according to Loula it was late for that; she would never have children. Relais smiled, because to him children seemed a nuisance.