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jennifermreads's review against another edition
3.0
When Maya finds herself sent to a small island in Chile until “it is safe to come home,” she takes along a notebook from her grandmother to recount the journey that led her there.
My sister is a HUGE Isabel Allende fan. So, when I saw that the 2017 Book Riot Read Harder Challenge had a challenge to read a book by a Central or South American author set in Central or South America, well, I knew Isabel Allende would be the one to check this box!
By the end, I found that I had enjoyed reading Maya’s story, following her journey to the island and learning about her life in the small community of Chiloé. But along the way, I struggled to connect with Maya and, several times, I wondered if I should put the book aside and move on. It was a determination to meet the Read Harder Challenge that I hung on and finished. I am glad I hung on as the story was indeed a good one – though I was not surprised by the twists. I also think it was the secondary characters that kept me in the book for the long haul. I enjoyed Manual, Blanca, Freddy, and the many residents of Chiloé. All were an entertaining bunch and helped me continue with the story when Maya was driving me a little mad!
My sister is a HUGE Isabel Allende fan. So, when I saw that the 2017 Book Riot Read Harder Challenge had a challenge to read a book by a Central or South American author set in Central or South America, well, I knew Isabel Allende would be the one to check this box!
By the end, I found that I had enjoyed reading Maya’s story, following her journey to the island and learning about her life in the small community of Chiloé. But along the way, I struggled to connect with Maya and, several times, I wondered if I should put the book aside and move on. It was a determination to meet the Read Harder Challenge that I hung on and finished. I am glad I hung on as the story was indeed a good one – though I was not surprised by the twists.
Spoiler
I’m not sure how I suspected that Manual was her biological grandfather but I did figure it out. Though I admit, I thought he was Nini’s first husband Felipe living under an assumed name. Also, I was not surprised the Officer Arana turned out to be a corrupt cop tied up with Brandon and the rest of the Vegas underworld. Again, I’m not sure how I knew but I felt it in my gut!liztaylor772's review against another edition
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
angel07141789's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
milania5906's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
kcw98's review against another edition
4.0
I love Allende’s writing style and I was so intrigued by the storyline that I couldn’t put the book down! I like all the Spanish in it—some parts of her experiences in Chile remind me of mine in Peru. I liked reading Manual Arias’ back story. I even liked reading about Maya’s years of delinquency, crime, and drug abuse. It’s dark stuff, but it shows sad realities of the world that I’ve never seen before.
4 stars because its dark and I thought sometimes the chapters where she’s in Chile were kinda slow.
4 stars because its dark and I thought sometimes the chapters where she’s in Chile were kinda slow.
elisp2511's review against another edition
5.0
This is my favorite Allende book, and maybe it’s because I read it as a teenager, which made it even more relatable, but this is a masterpiece
jo_mentaltravels's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
EN: In mid-September, I arrived from a month-long travel to Chiloé – a ticket offered by one of my best friends, that led me to the depths of spiritual rejuvenation and emotional hell. I mean, I finished reading "Maya's Notebook" (2011), by Isabel Allende.
The story centers on Maya Vidal – a 19-year-old girl whose teenage years catch her in a web of unfortunate decisions and unknown danger. In uncertainty, it is through her diary that Maya shares the intricacies of her past – that led her to fly incognito to a remote island in Chile – and of her present – in a journey of healing and self-discovery.
To me, to read Allende feels like listening to a grandmother telling stories near a bonefire – through an unpolished, but captivating mix of original episodes, other-worldly characters and breath-taking scenery. And the "Notebook" had this in tons – sometimes it worked brilliantly, other times I sensed something was missing. Nevertheless, Maya's journey remained utterly inspiring. I sense my friend introduced me to a new life-long friend.
— Jo. 🐞🍀
–#–#–#–
PT: A meio de Setembro, cheguei de uma viagem de um mês a Chiloé – um bilhete oferecido por uma das minhas melhoras amigas, e que me levou às profundezas do rejuvenescimento espiritual e ao inferno emocional. Ou seja, terminei “O Caderno de Maya” (2011), de Isabel Allende.
A história centra-se em Maya Vidal – uma rapariga de 19 anos cuja adolescência a enreda numa teia de decisões infelizes e perigos desconhecidos. Na incerteza, é através do seu diário que Maya partilha os meandros do seu passado – que a levou a viajar incógnita para uma ilha remota no Chile – e do seu presente – numa viagem de cura e auto-descoberta.
Para mim, ler Allende é como ouvir uma avó a contar histórias junto à lareira – numa mistura crua, mas cativante, de episódios originais, personagens de outro mundo e cenários de cortar a respiração. E sinto que o "Caderno" teve disso em abundância – por vezes, funcionou de maneira brilhante; noutras, senti que faltava algo. Ainda assim, a jornada de Maya permaneceu inequivocamente inspiradora. Sinto que a minha amiga presenteou-me com mais uma amiga para a vida.
— Jo. 🐞🍀
The story centers on Maya Vidal – a 19-year-old girl whose teenage years catch her in a web of unfortunate decisions and unknown danger. In uncertainty, it is through her diary that Maya shares the intricacies of her past – that led her to fly incognito to a remote island in Chile – and of her present – in a journey of healing and self-discovery.
To me, to read Allende feels like listening to a grandmother telling stories near a bonefire – through an unpolished, but captivating mix of original episodes, other-worldly characters and breath-taking scenery. And the "Notebook" had this in tons – sometimes it worked brilliantly, other times I sensed something was missing. Nevertheless, Maya's journey remained utterly inspiring. I sense my friend introduced me to a new life-long friend.
— Jo. 🐞🍀
–#–#–#–
PT: A meio de Setembro, cheguei de uma viagem de um mês a Chiloé – um bilhete oferecido por uma das minhas melhoras amigas, e que me levou às profundezas do rejuvenescimento espiritual e ao inferno emocional. Ou seja, terminei “O Caderno de Maya” (2011), de Isabel Allende.
A história centra-se em Maya Vidal – uma rapariga de 19 anos cuja adolescência a enreda numa teia de decisões infelizes e perigos desconhecidos. Na incerteza, é através do seu diário que Maya partilha os meandros do seu passado – que a levou a viajar incógnita para uma ilha remota no Chile – e do seu presente – numa viagem de cura e auto-descoberta.
Para mim, ler Allende é como ouvir uma avó a contar histórias junto à lareira – numa mistura crua, mas cativante, de episódios originais, personagens de outro mundo e cenários de cortar a respiração. E sinto que o "Caderno" teve disso em abundância – por vezes, funcionou de maneira brilhante; noutras, senti que faltava algo. Ainda assim, a jornada de Maya permaneceu inequivocamente inspiradora. Sinto que a minha amiga presenteou-me com mais uma amiga para a vida.
— Jo. 🐞🍀
rhi4794's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse, Rape, and Sexual assault
laviskrg's review against another edition
2.0
I don't think 20000 characters comprise a space sufficient for me to explain why I am so utterly disappointed with this book. And yet, I feel like I almost cannot attack it, because Isabel Allende is my utmost favourite female author and I adore her books, her writing style and I respect her immensely. But this book was nothing like I thought it would be, like it could have been. Maybe because I simply cannot read "coming of age" young adult lit, I don't know. Maybe because I despise the cliche of the pathetic American teenager who fucks up because mummy and daddy are distant, or because they are having it much too easy to appreciate life. Anyway....here is my sad review, which I write with a broken heart.
The novel started out quite well. I very much enjoyed the family of the main character, their dynamics (albeit exaggerated), the past of Nidia, and how she met Popo and fell in love. All that was awesome. The problem (from the first page to the last) was Maya. Oh, how I hated this lame, pathetic excuse for a woman. Maya is everything I despise in so-called teenagers (I firmly believe that still going through physical, emotional and mental development is not an excuse to be an idiot). She is whiny and weak, incapable of appreciating all that she has and so utterly clingy, that it gets annoying. I was very close to my grandfather, I really was. I can understand how one's life can be completely turned upside down when an important member of one's family dies. But I see family love as a bit less clingy and intimate as it appears in Maya's childhood. I cannot understand the sleeping in the same bed or room as one's relatives after the age of 6. To me, that kind of love is tiring and it leads to extreme trauma because the child loses all adaptability or chance to mature. But despite all this, the beginning of the story was great. The part about Chiloe was amazing up to Daniel's appearance, but I will get to that later. Basically, as is written on the cover regarding to Maya's life, the novel becomes lame after Popo's death. At that point, if you thought that Maya was quirky and cute and passable as a protagonist, all hopes die because she becomes nothing more than a typical "rebellious" teenager who intentionally fucks herself up just because. Losing someone beloved is not an excuse to destroy all the other members of the family and one's self. This is an omnipresent concept in crappy American films, but it is not realistic and it does not birth compassion.
I went through her girl gang days rapidly, without much interest. Everything is so overdone and so typical. I know there is abuse in the world, and horrible families and painful lives. But all of these horrendous elements were brought together and piled over the other just to torture Maya and make her a victim. It was artificial and that is the only word I can find to describe the rest of Maya's struggles without using profanity. Was it bad? Yes. Did she deserve most of it? Yes. Did I care? Not a bit. Maya starts her down-spiralling journey of destruction, rape, violence, drugs, prostitution and crime, but in my eyes it was just a string of random events which she could have run from AT ANY TIME. The horrible rape (which is the only event for which no one can blame her) would have been more than enough for any normal human being to return home, crying, broken, hurt, but still alive, still sane. But is is Maya herself who, having been offered the chance to call her Nini, announces that Las Vegas seems cool and exciting. Really? This is a realistic reaction from someone who had just been brutally raped in a motel by a disgusting excuse of a human being? From that point on, when she so stupidly follows Brandon Leeman, all her pain becomes her fault. Who agrees to have a summer job for a drug trafficker when they have escaped from a rehab facility? Who agrees to live in a disgusting dump simply because they receive enough money to go to a gym and a spa and do nothing all day long except get drunk and get high? Someone without willpower, someone who inspires nothing but disgust in the end. And let's say that maybe this is passable, considering her age and the fact that she has the mental development of a 10 year old. But when the shit hits the fan, not even her basic instinct of survival manages to surface from beneath the sea of addiction, dependency and weakness. She is less than an animal. She constantly needs to be saved, pushed around, helped, directed.
While the book is written in an interesting way (a combination of her recovery in Chiloe and her fall in Vegas), the novel also suffers from this, mostly because there is no climax in this story. Even when she reaches her very worst, you know she won't die (although this would have been realistic). You know she will be saved (like every pathetic lead in YA literature) and you can see that she does have a soul and she does have some personality, albeit extremely frail and artificial. So basically, what is the point of all the abuse? Don't do drugs? Don't be stupid and cowardly? Not worth so many pages of whining.
After she is saved, the parts about Chiloe become boring as well. Without the contrast with the Vegas parts, one realizes that nothing of relevance happens in this book. It is all just a string of events that are meant to draw out the main idea that family is ever-lasting, that there are people who will stay with you and love you despite everything. Too bad that Maya does not inspire in me any kind of positive feeling so ultimately, I cannot help but believe that her "tribe" is wasted on her.
I will not go into her "love" with Daniel, because it was trite, boring, cliched and it lacked a soul. And, sadly, it did not even achieve anything. Perhaps it was meant to be her final real passing into womanhood. But, instead of getting over their pathetic breakup, she became addicted to the concept of love just like it would have been any other kind of drug. She cried and yelled and broke things like a self-described brat. She is not worthy of spending time with the witches at the ruca, one of the nicest female interaction scenes in this book.
The ending was as anti-climactic as the entire novel. She didn't even DO anything. She just fell off a cliff, together with the saddest excuse of a villain possible. Two random boys and her dog did more than the main protagonist. Sad.
What I did manage to like (elements which the story should have been more focused on): Chiloe, Manuel, Blanca, the ruca witches, Fahkeen, Nidia and Popo's relationship, the explanation of what happened to the tortured victims during the dictatorship.
What ruined it all: Maya and her nonsensical story. The lack of villains and a climax. The excuses and cliches. The weird comedic effect in situation that to me were anything but funny. The ease with which seemingly dramatic events were simply swept under the rug. Maya as the saddest excuse of a female character when I have come to expect only greatness from the author.
I will still read anything Isabel Allende writes. The language in this novel is awesome, the descriptions, everything that is related to the quality of writing. But the story is disappointing. But as opposed to other books that have disappointed me and left me angry, this one just leaves me sad.
The novel started out quite well. I very much enjoyed the family of the main character, their dynamics (albeit exaggerated), the past of Nidia, and how she met Popo and fell in love. All that was awesome. The problem (from the first page to the last) was Maya. Oh, how I hated this lame, pathetic excuse for a woman. Maya is everything I despise in so-called teenagers (I firmly believe that still going through physical, emotional and mental development is not an excuse to be an idiot). She is whiny and weak, incapable of appreciating all that she has and so utterly clingy, that it gets annoying. I was very close to my grandfather, I really was. I can understand how one's life can be completely turned upside down when an important member of one's family dies. But I see family love as a bit less clingy and intimate as it appears in Maya's childhood. I cannot understand the sleeping in the same bed or room as one's relatives after the age of 6. To me, that kind of love is tiring and it leads to extreme trauma because the child loses all adaptability or chance to mature. But despite all this, the beginning of the story was great. The part about Chiloe was amazing up to Daniel's appearance, but I will get to that later. Basically, as is written on the cover regarding to Maya's life, the novel becomes lame after Popo's death. At that point, if you thought that Maya was quirky and cute and passable as a protagonist, all hopes die because she becomes nothing more than a typical "rebellious" teenager who intentionally fucks herself up just because. Losing someone beloved is not an excuse to destroy all the other members of the family and one's self. This is an omnipresent concept in crappy American films, but it is not realistic and it does not birth compassion.
I went through her girl gang days rapidly, without much interest. Everything is so overdone and so typical. I know there is abuse in the world, and horrible families and painful lives. But all of these horrendous elements were brought together and piled over the other just to torture Maya and make her a victim. It was artificial and that is the only word I can find to describe the rest of Maya's struggles without using profanity. Was it bad? Yes. Did she deserve most of it? Yes. Did I care? Not a bit. Maya starts her down-spiralling journey of destruction, rape, violence, drugs, prostitution and crime, but in my eyes it was just a string of random events which she could have run from AT ANY TIME. The horrible rape (which is the only event for which no one can blame her) would have been more than enough for any normal human being to return home, crying, broken, hurt, but still alive, still sane. But is is Maya herself who, having been offered the chance to call her Nini, announces that Las Vegas seems cool and exciting. Really? This is a realistic reaction from someone who had just been brutally raped in a motel by a disgusting excuse of a human being? From that point on, when she so stupidly follows Brandon Leeman, all her pain becomes her fault. Who agrees to have a summer job for a drug trafficker when they have escaped from a rehab facility? Who agrees to live in a disgusting dump simply because they receive enough money to go to a gym and a spa and do nothing all day long except get drunk and get high? Someone without willpower, someone who inspires nothing but disgust in the end. And let's say that maybe this is passable, considering her age and the fact that she has the mental development of a 10 year old. But when the shit hits the fan, not even her basic instinct of survival manages to surface from beneath the sea of addiction, dependency and weakness. She is less than an animal. She constantly needs to be saved, pushed around, helped, directed.
While the book is written in an interesting way (a combination of her recovery in Chiloe and her fall in Vegas), the novel also suffers from this, mostly because there is no climax in this story. Even when she reaches her very worst, you know she won't die (although this would have been realistic). You know she will be saved (like every pathetic lead in YA literature) and you can see that she does have a soul and she does have some personality, albeit extremely frail and artificial. So basically, what is the point of all the abuse? Don't do drugs? Don't be stupid and cowardly? Not worth so many pages of whining.
After she is saved, the parts about Chiloe become boring as well. Without the contrast with the Vegas parts, one realizes that nothing of relevance happens in this book. It is all just a string of events that are meant to draw out the main idea that family is ever-lasting, that there are people who will stay with you and love you despite everything. Too bad that Maya does not inspire in me any kind of positive feeling so ultimately, I cannot help but believe that her "tribe" is wasted on her.
I will not go into her "love" with Daniel, because it was trite, boring, cliched and it lacked a soul. And, sadly, it did not even achieve anything. Perhaps it was meant to be her final real passing into womanhood. But, instead of getting over their pathetic breakup, she became addicted to the concept of love just like it would have been any other kind of drug. She cried and yelled and broke things like a self-described brat. She is not worthy of spending time with the witches at the ruca, one of the nicest female interaction scenes in this book.
The ending was as anti-climactic as the entire novel. She didn't even DO anything. She just fell off a cliff, together with the saddest excuse of a villain possible. Two random boys and her dog did more than the main protagonist. Sad.
What I did manage to like (elements which the story should have been more focused on): Chiloe, Manuel, Blanca, the ruca witches, Fahkeen, Nidia and Popo's relationship, the explanation of what happened to the tortured victims during the dictatorship.
What ruined it all: Maya and her nonsensical story. The lack of villains and a climax. The excuses and cliches. The weird comedic effect in situation that to me were anything but funny. The ease with which seemingly dramatic events were simply swept under the rug. Maya as the saddest excuse of a female character when I have come to expect only greatness from the author.
I will still read anything Isabel Allende writes. The language in this novel is awesome, the descriptions, everything that is related to the quality of writing. But the story is disappointing. But as opposed to other books that have disappointed me and left me angry, this one just leaves me sad.
shopgiri's review against another edition
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75