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A review by clapoz
I Lived on Butterfly Hill by Marjorie Agosín
4.0
It took me a little while to start the book. I read and reread the first two pages several times, and for some reason, I didn’t get hooked. However, one day I decided it was time to keep on reading and I couldn’t put the book down.
The narrative is beautiful and pleasant, (I want to say “light like a butterfly”), even when she was describing the horrors thet people lived during the dictatorship. It was a bit hard for me to read because it reminded me a lot of what I lived before coming here, what my family are still living… Also, because I know what happened in Chile for real during those years, how there are people who went missing and no one ever knew what happened to them, ever. Furthermore, her descriptions of living abroad, the nostalgia both the narrator, her aunt and her grandmother felt is a feeling I understand perfectly, even if I have lived here only for 10 months or so. I saw my sister on the Tía Graciela character. My sister has lived abroad for about 15 years and misses a country that does not exist anymore (that is true nostalgia!).
The descriptions of Valparaíso and Chile are truly wonderful, even if I have never been there I could imagine the streets, the harbor, the people. The whole book reminded me of how different but at the same time, how much we Latin americans have in common.
I really liked the book, because she showed how hard being an exile can be, even if she changed the names of the politicians, and made Pinochet’s dictatorship last only 2 or 3 years instead of 16. For young readers, it is the perfect introduction to the beautiful but complicated society that is Latin America. I also enjoyed how the translator left many words and phrases in Spanish, which is something I normally don’t like, but in this case, I felt kept the essence of the narrator, her identity wouldn’t have been right if Spanish had been left out of the story.
To be honest, I thought the protagonist was going to live more tragic experiences, and I am glad I was wrong.
The narrative is beautiful and pleasant, (I want to say “light like a butterfly”), even when she was describing the horrors thet people lived during the dictatorship. It was a bit hard for me to read because it reminded me a lot of what I lived before coming here, what my family are still living… Also, because I know what happened in Chile for real during those years, how there are people who went missing and no one ever knew what happened to them, ever. Furthermore, her descriptions of living abroad, the nostalgia both the narrator, her aunt and her grandmother felt is a feeling I understand perfectly, even if I have lived here only for 10 months or so. I saw my sister on the Tía Graciela character. My sister has lived abroad for about 15 years and misses a country that does not exist anymore (that is true nostalgia!).
The descriptions of Valparaíso and Chile are truly wonderful, even if I have never been there I could imagine the streets, the harbor, the people. The whole book reminded me of how different but at the same time, how much we Latin americans have in common.
I really liked the book, because she showed how hard being an exile can be, even if she changed the names of the politicians, and made Pinochet’s dictatorship last only 2 or 3 years instead of 16. For young readers, it is the perfect introduction to the beautiful but complicated society that is Latin America. I also enjoyed how the translator left many words and phrases in Spanish, which is something I normally don’t like, but in this case, I felt kept the essence of the narrator, her identity wouldn’t have been right if Spanish had been left out of the story.
To be honest, I thought the protagonist was going to live more tragic experiences, and I am glad I was wrong.