The Nature of Things

"A long petal of the sea" is a phrase that Pablo Neruda employed in a poem describing his homeland, Chile. Isabel Allende appropriated it for the title of her book and she heads each chapter of it with a quote from one of Neruda's poems. Neruda even appears as a character in this historical fiction novel. At times, he seems to overwhelm the story. At the heart of the narrative though is the story of Victor Dalmau and Roser Bruguera and it begins in Spain in 1939. In the 1930s the Spanish Civil War is raging. Victor lives in Barcelona with his parents and brother, Guillem, and with Roser who is a poor child who was a piano student of Victor's father. She showed great promise and when she was abused by her family, the Dalmaus took her in. In time, Roser fell in love with Guillem, and by the time he joined the republican forces fighting against Franco, she was pregnant with his child. Victor was not inclined to join the fight. Instead, he was studying to be a doctor. But...