“Eva Luna” is the story of a young woman who grows up in turn of the century [insert Central/South American country here]. We are never given the name of the nation in which this story is based, but there are many hints and my personal prediction is that this is set in either Chile or Argentina. Anyways, Eva Luna, the character, finds out that while her life is chaotic and seemingly destined to a live in service, she finds that she has a knack for story telling. This gets her out of all sorts of scrapes, but in the end it complicates what we know about her.
“Eva Luna” is the third book I’ve read cover to cover in Spanish. It’s been a personal challenge t
o read more in Spanish. The positive takeaway from this experience was that while reading “Eva Luna” I was able to imagine what was happening in my head rather than just concentrating on each word. It felt like that moment when it first happens around middle-school where you stop reading at the word level and you start reading at the image or idea level. The negative from the experience was that I still had to put a lot of effort into reading the book which resulted in me taking twice as much time to read the book than a book in English.
I want to like this book more than I do. I don’t like vague endings especially after such random events. It makes the time I put into the book a waste since we’re told she may have made it all up. At the same time Eva captures my attention and I was invested in her life and the people who fleshed out her stories.
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