Book Review: The Wind Knows My Name

Mrs P

March 9

Isabel Allende ~ The Wind Knows My Name

Synopsis

Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht - the night their family loses everything. As her child's safety seems ever harder to guarantee, Samuel's mother secures a spot for him on the last Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin.

Arizona, 2019. Eight decades later, Anita Diaz and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador and seeking refuge in the United States. But their arrival coincides with the new family separation policy, and seven-year-old Anita finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. She escapes her tenuous reality through her trips to Azabahar, a magical world of the imagination. Meanwhile, Selena Duran, a young social worker, enlists the help of a successful lawyer in hopes of tracking down Anita's mother.

Review

I first discovered Isabel Allende at school, when I read and studied The House of Spirits in Spanish. I immediately fell in love with her writing, as she expertly weaves together the most intricate stories that show the best and worst of humanity, along with love, passion and hope. Her prose is beautiful, showing that sometimes there is nothing wrong with telling, rather than showing, as long as it's done well.

In The Wind Knows My Name we have two timelines and stories that seem impossible to link, so disparate are they in their circumstance and event; naturally, they do converge once we have watched the characters suffer unspeakable tragedies that affect their descendants. Although decades apart, Allende shows us that even children can be resilient when forced into difficult circumstances and that - in spite of all the horrors in the world - good people still exist.

For such a short book, it has a lot of impact and there is powerful emotion throughout. Rather than overwrite the story, Allende has chosen to limit the length to ensure it resonates and the pace is consistent. Characters are vivid and yet Allende also conjures up a brilliant sense of place, through atmospheric description to ensure that her readers are transported to each location. Despite the horrors of Kristallnacht and refugee camps, the ways in which the children cope with their situations are hopeful and heartwarming,

This was almost perfect, but unfortunately the chapter with the pandemic broke up the prose and took me out of the story. That said, this is still a stunningly powerful read that encapsulates emotion, determination and imagination.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.