2.5 stars

[a:Ingrid Betancourt|27818|Ingrid Betancourt|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1283019977p2/27818.jpg], a politician who was kidnapped by FARC and held for over 6 years, wrote this novel about a young woman, Julia, living in Argentina in the 1970s, during the Dirty War. She and her boyfriend join the radical Montoneros opposed to the military dictatorship of the country and are eventually kidnapped and tortured.

There are two timelines – one following Julia as a young woman when she meets and falls in love with Theo and his political leanings, leading into their kidnapping; and a second taking place roughly 30 years later, when she and Theo are married and she suspects him of having an affair.

Julia has the gift of premonition, and this promise of magical realism was one of the main reasons I read the book. This premonitory aspect, though threading together certain events, was not a big part of the story. I'm just disappointed that the publisher's description made this out to be something that it wasn't.

I loved the first two chapters, but then Betancourt starts to lay the foundation for the political upheaval, and she lost me. The writing style became very dry and there was too much information overall, but not enough of the kind I needed – the kind specific to the main characters. I disliked how she wove real historical figures into her characters' lives with detail – rather than portraying their lives objectively to simply set the scene. After Julia is kidnapped and tortured, I started to get more interested in the story. Her imprisonment was the best part of this book, undoubtedly informed by the author's own time as a prisoner.

Most of the book is written from Julia's perspective but over halfway in, we're shown things from Theo's perspective all of a sudden, and then it bounces back between the two. I didn't like this shift at all.

The dialogue was somewhat stilted and unrealistic, as were some other parts of the writing – I'm not sure how much of this was the author's doing and how much happened in translation, as this was originally written in French.

Though I enjoyed some of the book, it was disjointed and I'm not sure how much of the story I'll actually retain because of that. ( )

Basically, it's like Isabel Allende meets Susanna Kearsley -- South American history and politics with a little supernatural romance-y-ness. I really really wanted to like this one, being partial to Betancourt, but it was just a little too ... I can't put my finger on it ... emotionless? Stiff? The flipping between the past and present -- always something I'm "eh" on anyway -- was tiresome to me -- artificially stretched the tension.

This was a nicely executed piece of historical political fiction. Most of the novel took place in Argentina during the 1970's. I enjoyed the fact it set during a hostile political environment in a foreign country, unfortunately for me, I think I lost some of the impact because I didn't have any prior knowledge or point of reference for the events described. I really enjoy mysticism, and supernatural elements, but I'm not sure those tied in well with the rest of the novel. It's interesting from the standpoint of familial inheritance and perhaps being attuned to ancestral roots. I did enjoy the passages with the visions she had, they were climactic and vivid. However, it didn't jive well for me in regards to the rest of the material. ( )

In 2008, Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt made headlines when she and fourteen other hostages were rescued after being held by a guerrilla army in the Colombian jungle for over six years. Betancourt detailed her account of those events previously in her 2010 memoir Even Silence Has An End. But in her debut novel of the fictional persuasion she has undertaken the task of telling the story of Argentina's "Dirty War" - a period left out of most classroom history lessons - through the lens of her experience.

This "war," which Argentinians call the time of "state terrorism genocide" is a blight in the nation's history. Covering the early 1970s through the early 80s, it was a period of uncertainty and terrible truths in the wake of Peron's return from exile, and the subsequent succession of his widow Isabel to the presidency following Peron's death. Marxists and socialists - many of them students - were hunted down and tortured; members of their support networks were assassinated in the streets. And between 10- and 30,000 citizens became "desaparecidos" - the disappeared. Some of them - their bodies would wash ashore in Uruguay after being thrown from a plane. Some of them were tortured and then disposed of into mass graves, and wait even now to be identified. Still others will never be found.

In The Blue Line Betancourt merges her own experiences with this history, and creates a character - Julia - who embodies her own personal strength, but who also carries a secret that allows her (and the reader) to foresee the horrible suffering to come as the story unfolds. Julia has inherited her grandmother's gift - visions of the future through the eyes of an unknown source who calls, in one way or another, for help in their future moment. As a child, Julia saves her sister from drowning by teaching her to swim before the disaster she has foreseen can occur. As an adult, she has to confront a vision of her own future - which Mama Fina describes - in order to save another life, only to find herself being broken many more times by the death squadron that ruled Buenos Aires.

The magical aspect of the story takes a backseat to the horrors of the reality that Julia lives, but her character is stronger for it. What might in another novel be a distraction proves, in this one, to be a comfort - a way by which the reader can prepare themselves for each next step of Julia's perpetually angst-and-anxiety-ridden life. The story, if a shade unbelievable, is harrowing in its brutal descriptions of the horrors of a very real history. Julia, Mama Fina and Theo may not be as factual as that history, but Betancourt brings them to life with a deft vibrancy - an effect, I believe, of an empathy that most of us will thankfully never understand.

www.theliterarygothamite.com ( )

3.5 This book goes back and forward in time, a structure that I usually don't like but which worked for this book, at least until the end. A vivid and graphic description of the torture and violence that was Argentina in the seventies, the military coups and the disappeared. Julia, who also has the power of vision, showing her small snippets of events in the future, becomes caught up in the plight of the Montenaros and is therefore wanted by the government. Not sure this type of magical realism was necessary though it did serve her a good turn on one important occasion and is not an overwhelming theme of the novel. Loved her grandmother, who also has this sight. She isms very memorable characters.

The author's own background leads to her expertise in writing this type of novel, as she herself was a prisoner in the Colombia jungle for six years. The parts in the prison, the fear and terror, the torturers were hard to read but this was when her writing was the strongest. So many people went through such horrible things. Such a horrible time in this countries past. The story of Julia and Theo was very interesting, and it showed to sides of the people involved in such horror, one bent on revenge, the other willing and wanting to start over, not forget but just to live. Felt the ending was a bit rushed and confusing but all in all a very interesting story and an indepth look at a particular if horrible time in history. ( )