In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende

Overview:

A man, two women, and a dead body. A small accident during a snowstorm brought three broken people together and the time they spent on a journey for a secret mission provided them a pretext to tell each other’s tragic backstories.

Genre: Drama, romance, historical fiction

Release Year: 2017

Trigger Warning: This book contains details some may find disturbing: r*pe, murd*rs, domestic violence, suic*de, alcoholism, child death, assault, and miscarriage.

A little backstory

I bought this book for my 25th birthday. Nobody had recommended it to me, I just happened to stumble upon it while scanning through the display of an online bookstore. One day, I read this quote by Haruki Murakami, “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking”. I haven’t read any of his books but I think he made perfect sense with that sentence.

So, despite only reading online reviews about the book, I decided to get it.

Mr. Murakami’s quote might have a part—I want to read something not everyone else is reading—but my decision to buy the book without an ounce of hesitation was also driven by the fact that the price for the hardcover version was a steal.

📑My take on the book

I didn’t expect the book to have multiple trigger warnings that made me stop mid-page to just breathe and try to absorb what I just read. The backstories of the three main characters were so dark;

• Evelyn, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala had to witness multiple murders of her family members and was subjected to a horrible crime that changed her life. Years later, Evelyn found herself in a complicated situation when a dead body was found.

• Lucia was born in Chile and lived through multiple political uprisings one of which was the reason behind her brother’s disappearance (I might’ve missed a few things bc Lucia’s part was the most ‘boring’ of the three). Her mom’s desperation to find her brother’s whereabouts reminded me of ‘Laut Bercerita’ as the story shared a similar fate.

• Richard’s story was the worst. I hate him for what he did, I mean he was so negligent, careless, and selfish in handling his family problems. He could’ve handled things better as a father and a husband instead of finding escape in affairs and drinking. But the second/third last chapter where he told Lucia about the emotional weight and guilt he’d been carrying for more than 25 years was quite emotional and made me feel sorry for him.

• Another side character who had my empathy was Cheryl Leroy. The fact that her strong and determined self changed after childbirth and her husband despised her for that was just heart-wrenching. One of the saddest lines in her story: “She had not lived up to her youthful ambitions and now, as the signs of aging became more pronounced, she often found herself in tears.” Cheryl had to put up with the physical and verbal abuse from her husband because she needs his financial support for the expensive treatment of her son’s cerebral palsy.

What I liked and didn’t like

👍I love poetic writing and this book was full of it:

That loneliness, which in the past used to arrive unannounced like an unwelcome visitor, had now been relegated to a distant corner of her mind.

During the night, with his defenses lowered, his demons had come and clawed at him.

He carried with him the heavy debt of the mistakes he had made, a debt he had shared with no one.

She realized he was covered in invisible wounds, and he could clearly see the fine cuts life had inflicted on her.

“I carry with me the exhausting weight of my mistakes and omissions, and they’re a sackful of rocks” ”No problem. I’ve got the muscles to sling your sack across my shoulder and throw it into the frozen lake so it disappears forever.”

👍The story wasn’t only about the mystery of the dead body or an unprompted journey during bad weather. As I quote from a review by Janet Levine: Ultimately this is a novel of the redemptive recording of oral history and also of healing love. The murder subplot is an unnecessary add-on.

👎Minimum dialogues. The story development was mostly told through a big chunk of narrative paragraphs. No wonder I found it hard to read more than a chapter in one sitting without yawning. Although the last quarter of the book started to pick up the tense, I still needed a full week to finish its 340 pages while I could read the whole ‘A Comet Seekers’ by Helen Sedgwick (304 pages) in a single weekend.

👎This one I admit was due to my limited intelligence: I didn’t quite understand the meaning of snowstorm and its correlation with each of the character’s past and joint journey. I could only see the snow as a narrative tool because none of the story’s important aspects would happen without it. I couldn’t find anything deep about the snow which I think lessened the book’s appeal.

👍I read some of the reviews that said this book is a good book but isn’t Isabel Allende’s best. I personally give it 4 stars (⭐⭐⭐⭐) for the impeccable writing and the characters.

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Additional note: The book is available in Tokopedia (Big Bad Wolf) and Shopee Indonesia (Books & Beyond)