Eva Luna - introduction Erica Yoshida

Eva Luna was written by Isabel Allende, a Chilean woman writer. The story begins with the narration by Eva Luna herself, telling her mother Consuelo’s life story. The missionaries find Consuelo in a South American jungle so that no one knows her origin. After she spends years with them, she is taken to Little Sisters of Charity, a home of orphans run by nuns. She likes neither the walls around the building, nor the prayers for God. She leaves there and starts to work for professor Jones, a world famous scientist, where she meets a snake-bitten Indian man who will eventually become Eva Luna’s father.

Then, there is a description of Eva Luna’s happy childhood, protected by her silent mother and the wall, which shuts out almost every bit of news from the outer world. She fears professor Jones because of his research about mummies, but except for those strange collections of the professor’s, she loves the world inside the wall, where beautiful flowers bloom in the patio, and where rows of bookshelf await Consuelo’s attention between chores. She tells stories to Eva, whose heart stays pure inside the immaculate home.

Suddenly, the story’s location shifts into the northern part of Austria, as we start reading chapter two. Eight years before Eva is born, Rolf Carle is born as the third child of Lukas Carle, a strict teacher feared by every villager. WWII had begun when Rolf was 10 years old. The war takes his father away from him, and brings the Red Army to the village, who force villagers to work in a labor camp. Rolf doesn’t have any fear even when he has to bury scores of dead people, since he doesn’t even know fear without his father to remind him of what he needs to be afraid of. And when Lukas returns, he is so harsh to the family; he always orders his wife around, and scolds his children. Rolf’s retarded sister, Katharina, always hides beneath the table from her father. Rolf sometimes joins her. “Rolf Carle never forgot the milky light beneath the tablecloth, and many years later, on the other side of the world, he awakened weeping under the white mosquito netting where he slept with the woman he loved.” Here, we can guess why he suddenly appears in the story. He might become Eva’s lover in the future.

Now the story goes back to Eva, who has just lost her mother because of a chicken bone she swallowed. Professor Jones also dies soon, and Eva has no one to rely on except madrina, her godmother. She has to work for Dona, a rich, wicked woman for her living, even though she is only 7 years old. Dona and other servants are cold to her. The story continues and her difficult life seems to continue, but she remembers her mother’s last word before she died, “There is no death. If you can remember me, I will be with you always.” No one can stop turning pages, because Eva is such a positive, hardworking little girl. Readers feel that they want to support, help, and cheer her.