SOURCE: “El Plan Infinito: Isabel Allende's New World,” in Secolas Annals, Vol. 25, March, 1994, pp. 55-61.

In the following essay, Perricone briefly discusses magic realism in Isabel Allende's novel El Plan Infinito as a natural element of her characters' lives.

Isabel Allende's latest novel El plan infinito¹ coincides with the new life she has begun in California with significant implications on her subject matter and stylistic approach while retaining her interest in social and feminist concerns. Deriving from an intimate connection between life and art, she (as both the real and the created author of the novel), relates and explores life and society in the United States from the 1930's through the late 1980's. So captivated is this Chilean author by what is a new world for her—all her previous novels dealt with Latin America—that she is able to create an authentic work of the epoch of...