Slightly cheating to pick Isabel Allende as the first translated book you read in a year you promise yourself you'll read above and beyond the English language. Cheating because Allende and I are already intimately acquainted, I've been a reader since I was sixteen and received a copy of Eva Luna for my birthday. I return to her every few years, her back list is so huge, I can do this for a long time and never run out of books to read. But--sadly there is a but--Daughter of Fortune is not one of my favourite Allendes. I mean, it is excellent on its own and a wonderful picaresque tale of a young woman but there's... Too Much Going On and I don't know if I like picaresque stories very much for all that. Eliza, a beloved foundling, leaves her gentle upbringing and home to run away to Gold Rush era California to search for the man she thinks she loves. It's great, there's two more books in Eliza's journey which I will now read, being invested, but my favourite besides Eva Luna, which was my first is the unusual for Allende, suspense novel, Ripper, about a serial killer in Sam Francisco. Anyway, if you haven't discovered her yet, do! She's amazing. #bookstagram #121in2021 #isabelallende #daughteroffortune #literatureintranslation
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