Why a Booktrail?
1970s: An orphan born in Chile soon learns that she has an amazing talent for storytelling
Eva Luna
What you need to know before your trail
Eva Luna is no ordinary girl. She may not have had the best start in life but she soon learns that her name means ‘ life’ according to a book of names her mother looked at. Born in the back of a shadowy house, she grows up with old antiques, books in Latin and dusty dark rooms with mummified exhibits. However Eva beguiles everyone around her with her amazing visions and her magical imagination that keeps everyone and everything on their toes.
But her South American homeland is on the brink of war and soon Eva will find herself calling on her gifts and powers like never before.
Travel Guide
The setting is generally thought to be Chile or Venezuela although this is never really referred to and the feeling that this unnamed South American country could be any one of the continent’s ‘family’ is quite apt for this novel. Santa Maria, La Colonia, Agua Santa….all names of places in this world of Eva’s sharing different parts of her life. It’s a story that spans 40 years and moves from a surreal jungle to a modern-day urban capital.
Eva Luna – the name which means “life’ and ‘moon’ in Spanish is a loving and quite epic journey of one woman coming of age as her country does the same.
“The journey began by canoe, down tributaries that wound through a landscape to derange he senses…”
The journey is infused on every page with the seeds of magical realism which grow and produce jewelled images of magical realism. Like walking into a room, it’s like a mad cocktail party going on – so many locales, exotic characters who pop in and out at will, and the voluptuous sex scenes which are taking place in the side rooms.
Street urchins, guerilla leaders, transvestites are only a few of the characters in this book forming a picture of Eva’s life as she grows up. The country and the setting may not be explicitly named but it’s a country at war, trying to shake off years of autocratic rule. Both it and Eva are making their own stories for the future.
Eva uses her storytelling ability later on as way of coping with the oppressive atmosphere in Latin America at that time.
The booktrail for this novel looks at Chile’s time when Salvador Allende was overthrown as president in 1973.
Where Next?
