[sun surfer]

This book is bringing up a lot of thoughts of similarities to other books and films.

The first is 100 Years of Solitude which I read a long time ago. It is more of a fantasy or 'magical' of magical realism, but I still feel there's a lot of similarities- many characters and storylines of eccentric happenings in a quasi-fictitious land mixed with the violence and history of South America. I wouldn't be surprised if García Márquez and in particular this book is an inspiration for Allende.

The second is one of our previous selections, Love in the Time of Cholera and also by García Márquez. That book is a bit more realistic than 100 Years and captures the story of a more focused group of main characters, in particular a woman and two men who love her, which in a very general sense is similar to the main outline of Eva Luna.

The third is another selection of the lit club, this one the more recent Green Mansions. While the country of Eva Luna is imaginary and Allende is Chilean, I couldn't help but think the country of the book has a lot of similarities to Venezuela, including the oil riches. The indigenous tribes in Eva Luna remind me of the ones in Green Mansions and regardless I think it's very interesting we've had two selections in the last 12 months that have indigenous South American tribes as a focal point. I'm not sure if William Henry Hudson is an inspiration for Allende but I could see it, especially with Eva's mother's chimerical mysteriousness having some similarities to Rima from Green Mansions.

The fourth is an older film, a masterpiece called Aguirre, Wrath of God. This film deals with an expedition to find the city of gold in the Amazon in the 16th century. While the tone and story are very different from Eva Luna, much of the film takes place on the river, reminding me of Consuela's origin story in Eva Luna.

The fifth is a recent film, Roma. It's a fantastic film, and while it is Mexican and not South American, I was struck by many of the similarities in story. It concerns an indigenous woman who works as a maid in the mid-20th century and becomes pregnant out of wedlock, and also deals with riots, governmental uneasiness and protests of the time, and her love interest becomes involved in the violent protesting group.

The sixth is another lit club selection, One Thousand and One Nights. First of all, the book mentions it itself which is a level of Inception when the lit club selection we're reading mentions a previous lit club selection. But I had thought of the similarity before the book mentioned it, with the connection of the characters from the Middle East and the structure of many various characters and storylines all tied together to the main female protagonist storyteller in Eva Luna. It makes me wonder if that was one of Allende's inspirations for Eva Luna.

Edit- There is one more also. I knew I had thought of another while reading but couldn't remember it while writing the post, and of course soon after actually posting it came to me. It is Kiss of the Spider Woman. I saw the film, but it is based on a novel. It deals with two prisoners in an Argentine prison, one a sympathetic transgender woman and another a political prisoner that is part of a revolutionary group trying to overthrow the government. While that story is otherwise quite different, it's unusual similarities are striking in that Eva Luna also has a transgender character who is thrown in a prison and a large subplot concerns a revolutionary group and political prisoners, and there are other similarities but it would concern spoilers for Kiss of the Spider Woman. I wouldn't be surprised if the inspiration for the characters of Huberto Naranjo and Melicio/Mimi owe something to Kiss of the Spider Woman.