Inés of My Soul

Historical Fiction at its best

There are real life stories that are not celebrated enough. Such seems to be the case of the story of Inés de Suarez. In today’s society we are often looking at creating the next female hero; at times we get stories that seem more written as if the heroine was a man because authors often mistake femininity with frailty and physical prowess with strength. That’s how we get these terrible stories of 120lb femme fatales who obliterate a much bigger man in a fist fight... it doesn’t resonate with the audience.

That is not the case of Isabelle Allende’s protagonist, Inés. Here we see the perfect example of a kickass heroine, a tale that is not only believable, it is historical fact, and a female show more character that is not strong in spite of her gender, but whose strength comes in part due to her feminine charm.

Based on the story of the founding mother of Santiago, capital of Chile, and filled with the terrors of the Spanish conquest of the Americas and the wars it caused, the book juxtaposes injustice, violence and immortality with tenderness, love, passion and hope of a better future.

There are definitely fictional elements mixed with the truth, but being written as a letter to her daughter including her memoirs the mystical is successfully used to heighten the enjoyment of the fact without taking away from it.

I can say I have a new South American heroine in Inés de Suarez, and Isabel Allende continues being an author I enjoy reading.

10/10 show less

Ines of My Soul – Isabel Allende
4 stars

Inez Suarez, a 16th century conquistadora, played an important role in the Spanish conquest of Chile. Ines of My Soul is the fictional memoir of this amazing woman. Allende gives Inez a voice to tell the story of her marriages, love affairs and adventures. She details the brutality of the wars against the indigenous population, and describes the difficult labor of founding a city in a new land. Inez directs the text of her memoir to her step-daughter. At a certain point in the story she indicates that she is dictating to her daughter. I think this technique gave Inez a very real voice. I felt that I was listening to a conversation or that this very interesting woman was talking directly to me. show more
Inez has a great deal to say about the history of Chile, but also about the role of women. She does not spare the Spaniards in her descriptions of atrocities committed against the native population and she speaks with respect and admiration of the Mapuches. This may not be a historically accurate viewpoint, but it made her character more palatable. This was my first reading of Allende. I’m looking forward to more. show less

I should have liked this more as I love most of Allende's works and I have been to Peru; however, this read, at times, more like a history of Chile than a work of fiction. Perhaps it was the first person narrator that bothered me. The story is told by Inez Suarez. Born to a poor family in Spain, she marries the "love of her life" at an early age. The "love" however, eventually fades and the husband goes to the new world to find gold. Through a set of circumstances, she is able to use the excuse of searching for him and she too leaves her poor status in Spain and goes to Peru. The journey is treacherous and times are extremely hard.

She eventually meets Pedro de Valdivia who is considered the founder of Chile. Although they cannot marry show more as he is married as she is, the live as husband and wife in Peru. De Valdivia is a soldier under one of the Pizarro brothers and leads an expedition to Chile taking Ines with him. The conditions are almost unbelievable and the South American Indians are treated horribly and also horribly torture.

There are lots of battle scenes and scenes of torture. The complications of life with De Valdivia are interesting as is her relationship with her second husband.

I liked the scenes in Peru having been to Cuzco and some of the South American Indian culture; however, sometimes the "history" is too much. show less

This work of historical fiction tells the story of the Spaniards' conquest of Chile in the mid-1500s. Allende attempts to bring a unique perspective to this time period by telling the story in a woman's voice. Ines Suarez left Spain for South America in search of her lover, and ended up the life partner of Pedro de Valdivia, a conquistador responsible for the "discovery" of Chile and suppression of the native people.

I enjoyed Allende's previous novels, including House of the Spirits and Daughter of Fortune. Allende's writing can be positively magical. Unfortunately, this book does not live up to Allende's potential. I never fully identified -- or even liked -- the characters and couldn't get excited about the violence wrought against show more native people in the pursuit of gold and riches for the white man. show less

This is the life story of Ines Suarez, a Spanish woman from a poor background, who became the gobernadora (the female governor) of Chile. She left Spain to find her husband in the New World although she had no love for him. Eventually she discovered that he had died in battle and she was a widow. By this time she was in Cuzco Peru and she encountered Pedro de Valdivia and the two of them fell passionately in love. Valdivia was a trusted military advisor to Franciso Pizarro, the Spanish conquistador who toppled the Incan empire. As a result of his service to Pizarro, Valdivia was a wealthy man but he dreamed of going to Chile and settling that land. Ines and Valdivia convinced Pizarro to let them make the attempt. They were accompanied show more by some Spanish soldiers, a priest, the pregnant Incan wife of one of the soldiers and many Yanacona Indians. This troupe crossed a barren desert and reached the site of Santiago but the Chilean Indians, the Mapuche, were not about to accept these intruders in their land. Ines was a valuable participant in the travels because of her knowledge of medicine and also her ability to dowse for water. Many years of hardship and fighting followed the settlement of Santiago. Ines and Valdivia were together for 10 years but never married since Valdivia had a wife back in Spain. After Valdivia made a trip to Peru he abandoned Ines who promptly married one of his lieutenants, Rodrigo de Quiroga, with whom she lived happily for 30 years.

That's the bare bones of the story but the details make a fascinating read. Allende had to imagine many of the details because, although Ines Suarez was a real person and did shape the history of Chile, not much is known about her. Perhaps because Allende is Chilean herself, these details ring true. Allende doesn't gloss over the grisly details of the battles with the Mapuche and some may find that off-putting. It was certainly a bloody period of history. As well as an historical story, this is also a love story. Ines was a woman who loved passionately and was loved passionately. She was also spiritual and mystical. Once you read this book I don't think you will ever forget Ines Suarez. I know I won't. show less

In this book, Isabel Allende takes on the difficult task of weaving together fragments of history and distant records from the conquest of Chile in the 1530s. Written in the first person, the novel gives a voice to Inés de Suárez, a genuine female conquistador. Through her, Allende introduces us to fully developed characters, as if we were part of an intimate conversation—Inés entrusts her story to us directly. The result is a superb insight into the gruesome and treacherous wars of conquest.

Allende skillfully navigates the fine line between her own voice as author and the voice of Inés de Suárez. This is no easy task, especially since Inés herself—like any conquistador—was both a victim and, at times, a perpetrator of show more violence in order to preserve her life and that of others in the newly founded settlement, later known as Santiago de la Nueva Extremadura, or today simply Santiago, the capital of Chile. Allende places herself in Inés’ shoes with extraordinary empathy, suspending judgment (though occasional flashes of regret break through) to remain faithful to Inés’ own version of history—her voice, her perspective.

Regardless of how we view the conquest today, Inés de Suárez emerges as a woman of her time, caught in an extraordinary situation. She is not repentant; on the contrary, she is proud of her achievements. Though at times repulsed by violence, she does not fully condemn it, nor the often brutal behavior of men—particularly toward indigenous women. Her testimony offers a crucial dimension to our understanding: a distinctly female, Spanish perspective on the conquest.

While history has preserved only scant and often unflattering facts about Inés de Suárez, it has been far more generous and forgiving toward male figures such as Diego de Almagro, Francisco de Aguirre, and Pedro de Valdivia, among many others. This imbalance, I believe, is the deeper story within Allende’s book.

The novel vividly portrays the “new world” of the so-called promised land through the eyes of the colonizers. With meticulous detail, Allende describes the geography—the pristine mountains, rivers, and air—the hardships of early settlement, the birth of a city, the poverty of the colonizers, their exploitation of indigenous people, and the rivalries among themselves, all with captivating realism.

With some background knowledge of Chilean history, I recognized that at least ninety percent of the names cited in the novel belonged to real people who shaped the country’s past: indigenous leaders such as Michimalonko, Lautaro (Felipe), and Vitacura (today commemorated in one of Santiago’s municipalities), as well as Spanish officers, soldiers, and many, if not most, of the women mentioned. Yet for a non-Chilean reader, this dimension—so vital to the novel’s richness—may go unnoticed. For this reason, I would have welcomed footnotes to help readers distinguish historical fact from fiction.

Having read much of Allende’s work, and at times feeling weary of her reliance on magical realism, I found this novel a breath of fresh air. To me, it stands as one of her finest—if not her best. I deeply value the historical research she undertook to deliver such a compelling and reliable narrative of the life of Inés de Suárez. show less

this was really hard for me but got easier toward the last third or so. most of the first almost 200 pages, though, were just ... boring. there would be little parts throughout that held my interest, and always there were parts that were written really well, but to get through chunks of this, i had to skim. (and i would normally never give a book more than a star or even a half star when i skim, but this really did improve, and did have some good parts.)

it's also a tough topic - the "founding" of a nation, which is just basically the heinous overtaking of a native people by colonizers. she tells the story from the side of the conquerors, and she writes, from their perspective, as if they have every right to take the land, enslave or show more brutally torture and murder the population, and transform peru or chile into enclaves of spain. (the only nice thing here is to be reminded that it's not just my america that did these awful things around the world. all western civilization is stained with these terrible stories.)

while i didn't really want to read incident after incident of indigenous people having their limbs (or noses) hacked off, i think it would have been easier to read if the characterization throughout the book was better, and more comprehensive. we just don't learn all that much about the characters other than ines, and that makes it hard to care, especially when they're awful colonizers.

but the feminist perspective in the book is welcome. to have the story be told from the point of view of the only woman to be on the campaign to conquer chile is interesting. she was real, and i'm not surprised that i'd never heard of her (i mean, i hadn't heard of the men in the story, either). it seems like there isn't a lot of actual record about her, so allende uses a lot of imagination to put us there. it's not, to be, at its base an interesting story, but i'm glad to have it from ines' perspective, and to know of this pretty remarkable and unique woman in history. show less