Ep 689 - In the Midst of Winter, by Isabel Allende

Summary

Podcast Summary: Overdue – Episode 689: In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende

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Introduction

In Episode 689 of Overdue, hosted by Andrew and Craig from Headgum, the duo delves into Isabel Allende's novel In the Midst of Winter. The episode, released on February 10, 2025, offers an engaging exploration of the book's narrative, themes, and characters, intertwined with personal anecdotes and insightful discussions.

Hosts' Opening Remarks

The episode begins with the hosts exchanging light-hearted banter about the upcoming Super Bowl. Andrew mentions recording the podcast on a Saturday to catch the game on Sunday, tying in the excitement of Philadelphia sports fans with the podcast’s theme.

Craig [00:07]: "While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any well-told tale, they will not shy away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary. Plus, these are books you should have read by now."

Book and Author Background

Andrew introduces In the Midst of Winter as his second foray into Isabel Allende's works, following his previous discussion of The House of Spirits in Episode 484. The hosts delve into Allende's background, highlighting her experience with political upheaval in Chile and her use of magical realism—a genre they humorously reference as "one of the few genres that we understand fully."

Andrew [05:10]: "It's the longer version of that quote, and she says that she first heard that quote at a place called the Omega Institute, which is a real place… this book comes out in 2017."

Craig provides additional context about Allende's accolades and contributions, emphasizing her commitment to refugee advocacy through her foundation.

Plot Summary

In the Midst of Winter revolves around three central characters—Lucia Mraz from Chile, Richard Bowmaster, a professor living in Brooklyn, and Evelyn from Guatemala. The narrative is set against the backdrop of a severe winter storm in 2016, which acts as a catalyst for the characters' interactions and the unfolding of their complex backstories.

• Lucia Mraz: A resilient woman from Chile, grappling with personal loss and searching for mature love. Her past is marked by her brother's disappearance during Chile's military coup, a recurring theme in Allende's works reflecting her own family's turmoil.

• Richard Bowmaster: A withdrawn professor haunted by past tragedies, including the accidental death of his daughter and his wife's subsequent suicide. His character embodies deep-seated guilt and the struggle to reconnect with life.

• Evelyn: A Guatemalan refugee entangled in a precarious situation involving a dead body in her trunk. Her storyline highlights the challenges faced by undocumented immigrants and the systemic issues within immigration enforcement.

The winter storm serves as the narrative device that brings these characters together, forcing them into a situation where they must confront their pasts and navigate their intertwined destinies.

Themes and Analysis

The hosts explore several prominent themes within the novel:

1. Immigration and Systemic Challenges: Evelyn's plight underscores the bureaucratic indifference and systemic hurdles that refugees face. The book portrays the impersonal nature of immigration systems, emphasizing individual humanity amidst widespread indifference.

2. Guilt and Redemption: Richard's journey is one of seeking redemption from his past mistakes. The storm metaphorically represents his internal turmoil and the possibility of finding an "invincible summer" within himself.

3. Resilience and Hope: Despite the bleakness of their backstories, the characters find ways to rebuild and seek happiness, embodying Allende's portrayal of strong women overcoming adversity without bitterness.

4. Interconnected Histories: The narrative intricately weaves personal histories with broader political contexts, reflecting Allende's commitment to historical accuracy and emotional depth.

Craig [07:05]: "She's a Chilean American author. As Andrew said, a lot of her personal experience of the Pinochet coup and rise is written about."

Reception and Reviews

Andrew and Craig discuss the polarized reception of the novel. While some readers appreciate Allende's storytelling prowess and the depth of character development, others critique the juxtaposition of serious historical themes with a seemingly contrived romantic comedy plot.

• Goodreads Reviews: Predominantly three-star ratings, with reviewers acknowledging the characters' rich backstories but expressing discomfort with the present-day plot's farcical elements.

Craig [58:14]: "Angela says I really liked each of these characters was taken by their experiences. But what didn't work for me was the present circumstances that keep them connected."

• Major Publications: Reviews from The Washington Post and The New York Times mirror similar sentiments, highlighting the tension between the novel's heavy thematic content and its lighter romantic elements.

Hosts' Opinions and Insights

Despite mixed reviews, Andrew and Craig offer their perspectives on the novel's effectiveness:

• Andrew's Take: He believes the blending of heavy backstories with zany present-day scenarios enhances the narrative's impact, allowing the emotional weight to resonate more deeply.

Andrew [22:13]: "But they was there, like, a number of stars out of… these themes that she is talking about. But they…"

• Craig's Perspective: Acknowledges the potential disconnect but appreciates how Allende intertwines personal histories with the current plot, viewing it as a deliberate stylistic choice.

Craig [42:24]: "Isabel Allende loves the movie Little Miss Sunshine. Like, that… transporting a corpse somewhere and then people, like, learn lessons about themselves."

They discuss the narrative structure, emphasizing how the characters' backstories are revealed through their interactions during the storm, creating a layered and multifaceted storytelling approach.

Andrew [61:00]: "And them staying up talking takes the form of, like, each of them taking another round through some element of their…"

Conclusion

In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende presents a complex tapestry of intertwined lives set against political and personal backdrops. Andrew and Craig appreciate the novel's ambitious attempt to marry serious historical themes with contemporary romantic elements, despite acknowledging the mixed critical reception. The hosts conclude by reaffirming the book's value in highlighting individual stories amidst systemic challenges, encapsulating Allende's literary mission to bring personal narratives to the forefront of broader societal issues.

Craig [66:36]: "All right, everybody, we'll be back to you next time with more of this podcast. But until then, everybody please go birds and try to be happy."

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Notable Quotes

• Craig [07:05]: "She's a Chilean American author. As Andrew said, a lot of her personal experience of the Pinochet coup and rise is written about."

• Andrew [22:13]: "But they was there, like, a number of stars out of… these themes that she is talking about. But they…"

• Craig [58:14]: "Angela says I really liked each of these characters was taken by their experiences. But what didn't work for me was the present circumstances that keep them connected."

• Craig [66:36]: "All right, everybody, we'll be back to you next time with more of this podcast. But until then, everybody please go birds and try to be happy."

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Final Thoughts

Episode 689 of Overdue effectively bridges Isabel Allende's richly woven narratives with the hosts' personable and insightful commentary. For listeners who appreciate deep literary analysis paired with relatable discussions, this episode offers a compelling dive into In the Midst of Winter, encouraging both reflection on personal resilience and the broader implications of immigration and systemic challenges.

Transcript

[Andrew]

This is a Headgum podcast.

[Craig]

While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any well told tale, they will not shy away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary. Plus, these are books you should have read by now. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

[Andrew]

My name is Andrew. Go Birds.

[Craig]

Go Birds.

[Andrew]

I hope it went good. We're recording this on Saturday so that we can watch the big game on Sunday. I'm sure that our boys are going to leave it all in the field one way or the other.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

But I hope it's like, good. But I hope it's good.

[Craig]

I hope it's good.

[Andrew]

Hope it's good.

[Craig]

It has just been. And I know. We'll talk about the books you've been meaning to read. Each week one of us reads a book, tells the other person about it. Andrew, what book did you read for this week?

[Andrew]

I read in the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende. Much like we are right now. The book, the book this week is in the Midst of Winter.

[Craig]

Well, that's, you know. And sometimes in the midst of winter, you find yourself living and dying by the fortunes of your chosen sports team.

[Andrew]

I'm just saying, America. Yeah, it's been a rough. It's been a rough one. Do you really want a bunch of Philadelphia sports maniacs mad about something else? Like, is that, is that the energy that you want to bring into 2025?

[Craig]

I'll just say that it's been cool being in Phil. One of the cool things. There aren't that many out there right now. One of the cool things is just existing in Philadelphia right now when you're just like, I don't know who you are. Go Birds. Where are. Can I help you find the restaurant? Go Birds. Thanks for my medicine. Go Birds.

[Andrew]

It's been an amazing. Yeah. And this was my, you know, experience the last couple times we've been to the Super Bowl.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

The good time in 2018, then the bad time that we don't talk about.

[Craig]

A couple years ago.

[Andrew]

But yeah, it was like, yeah. I went to the Acme in the grocery store and some guy just started yelling. He started spelling eagles.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

And everybody in the store had to play along with it. Also in the Acme, I. As I was picking out blueberries, I could push my cart over the Kansas City Chiefs roll, slash, stomp zone. Where I could. Where I could jump up and down on Patrick Mahomes name to curse him and make him Play bad in the upcoming football game. And then also I went to like lab corps to get some routine blood work done because I couldn't, they couldn't find a vein at my physical.

[Craig]

Uh huh.

[Andrew]

And so I went in and the lady's just like wearing an eagle shirt.

[Craig]

Go Birds.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I'm doing fine. Go Birds. Take my blood, please.

[Craig]

Superintendent of the Philadelphia school district declined to schedule. Declined to schedule a two hour delay for the Monday after the super bowl, knowing that like, a lot of kids and families might be up late watching the game.

[Andrew]

Henry's got a two hour delay because.

[Craig]

Preschool last time they did call one and we lost.

[Andrew]

I did lay. And this is why local news is so important. So the Philadelphia Inquirer did report this news.

[Craig]

Yes. Support your local paper and also support your local podcast. Thank you for being here and listening.

[Andrew]

Yeah, so this is feeling a lot like our kid who ran for President episode did when we were like, listen, you're gonna be hearing this after the events have occurred, but we're recording it before the events have occurred. And I just hope that our, our hope and our sense of childlike wonder can make you feel good regardless of how it went.

[Craig]

Listen, at the big game, my son is not really gonna understand if we lose, but he is currently loving yelling Go Birds. At people.

[Andrew]

That kid is a Philadelphia sports maniac born and bred. Like, you're gonna have to keep. I'm gonna have to grease all the, like the handrails in your house. In my house. Cause he's gonna start trying to climb em.

[Craig]

He'd climb. Got to give him a challenge. Andrew, you read Isabel Allende's in the Midst of Winter. This is your second Allende.

[Andrew]

It's my second one and it's. I, I have. So the, the one I read before was the House of Spirits, which I read for episode 484 in July of 2021. And yeah, it's, I remember that one being kind of a time jumpy sort of Magical realism.

[Craig]

That's her debut novel.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And we, and we, you know, listen, if you listen to this show for a while, you know, we like to, we like to point at butterflies and ask, is this magical realism?

[Craig]

It's one of the few genres that we understand fully.

[Andrew]

That one was a little magical realism, but it was a lot about, a lot about the like, political upheaval in Chile.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

And talking about. Because Allende is like distantly related to some of the people who are like, involved in that.

[Craig]

Like, oh yeah, the seventies coup of Pinochet. Her Relative was president at the time.

[Andrew]

Yes. Yeah. So, yeah, so, like that. That. That is a common thread. Like, I recognize that in this book there is a. There. Some characters are in Chile for a while, and that happens while those characters are there. So it's like part of the background for. But this is much more like character focused and even has some like, weird kind of heisty sort of elements that I'm. I'm interested to talk about.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

But like, what kind of background did you want to like, Obviously we talked a lot about Ayanda in that episode. We talked about her bio. You could go listen to that one if you want to hear us.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Talk about that. But what. What relevant facts did you dig up about this book?

[Craig]

Sure. You know, I do have the most relevant of facts about her just in case people don't want to go back and listen. She was born in 1942 in Peru. She's a Chilean American author. As Andrew said, a lot of her personal experience of the Pinochet coup and rise is written about. In House of Spirits was her debut novel. Other works include Of Love and Shadows, Eva luna, infinite plan, etc. She's won a lot of awards, including Chile's like, National Literature Award.

[Andrew]

Infinite Plan sounds like, like a counterpoint to Infinite. Just like, oh, you're. You're such a goof. You're doing this Infinite, Jess. Well, I've got an infinite plan.

[Craig]

This is my. This. I'm gonna publish a blog called the Infinite Plan about my plan to read Infinite Jest.

[Andrew]

It also sounds. I mean, it could be. Could be a self help book.

[Craig]

Could be.

[Andrew]

I feel like we've read enough self help books that you could write One step is to become self help, guys.

[Craig]

That's the grift. That's the grift. The title of the, of the book in the Midst of Winter comes from a quote by Albert Camus. In the midst of winter, I finally found in me an invincible summer. The longer version of that quote is. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there's something stronger, something better pushing right back. And she says that she first heard that quote at a place called the Omega Institute, which is a real place. It's the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies. It's in Rhinebeck, New York. It is a nonprofit educational center, spiritualist center. She heard a guy read that quote. It stuck with her. It was in her notebook. And then in the mid-2010s. So this book comes out in 2017. And there are some references, I understand, I don't know what they are to the political moment of 2017.

[Andrew]

Yeah, there's one, there's one Trump mentioned by name at the. Toward the end. But it all. And this is. Did Philadelphia get winter Storm Jonas? Like did it get.

[Craig]

What year was that?

[Andrew]

That was like late 2015 into like January 2016, I believe, where it did not.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

It had not snowed a lot that year. But that storm completely coated the entire region.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

We were still living in Jersey City when that happened and I. Susanna was like, I'm gonna stay home with the cat and watch tv. Thanks. But I went out into it like a psycho and took a bu of pictures of the like the surface of the moon.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

With no other people around.

[Craig]

I remember that storm.

[Andrew]

Yes.

[Craig]

I couldn't have told you its name.

[Andrew]

But yeah, I know the name because it's mentioned in this book. And then I just like remembered that it, I remembered that that was the name of it after I saw it. But Wikipedia says January 2016 United States Blizzard. Well, it's not like the name has been committed to history or anything.

[Craig]

Allendes thing is that she always starts books like on January 8th. I can't remember why that is. If it's. It's.

[Andrew]

Oh, she got it the time of any. Any new year where the reality of it is really sinking in.

[Craig]

It was a. It was, it was when her grandfather passed, I believe. And so I. It is not surprising to me that like she had kind of started in on this book and then this snowstorm happens and then she's kind of off to the races.

[Andrew]

But yeah, like the snowstorm is kind of a, like a prerequisite event for the other events in the book. And then like the heisty elements I mentioned are all kind of tied into this storm and I think that they all get wrapped up in a package that's a little, a little too neat in the end which we can talk about.

[Craig]

So she says that she started. Some of this is from an interview with book pages. Some of this is from an interview with democracynow.org, and then one interview with volume one, Brooklyn. She was having a meeting with friends. I was basically just like what should I write about? And her daughter in law was like, you should write a refugee story. We've covered on 484 that she started the Isabel Allende foundation, which does work with refugees, particularly women and girls. So I think the Evelyn Ortega plotline, one of the characters is like heavily influenced from her foundation's work and, like, stories that she, you know, read about.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it's very wrapped up in the experience of, like, trying to immigrate into the US like, without documents in this specific era.

[Craig]

And then. But, oh, to the Trump thing, she said that, you know, she starts writing this story about refugees, and at the time she started writing it, he was not even a candidate, so she had a germ of it before he had declared or at least had become the nominee or something.

[Andrew]

Yeah, in the book, it's like, you know, the. The Great Recession sets off this kind of wave.

[Craig]

Sure, yes.

[Andrew]

Immigrants scapegoating. And then by. By the end of the book, there is further immigrant scapegoating that's kind of driven in part by Trump's candidacy, which nobody's taking seriously, but which is kind of shifting the conversation about immigration.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

United States. Yeah, she said it is. It exists in the background, but it's never a. Like, none of the book is taking place during.

[Craig]

No, no first term.

[Andrew]

And it's not. It's not a thing that's explicitly.

[Craig]

It just arrives in the first term. And so I think gets talked about that way. She says it's all very zeitgeist, that the same book would be different today if she'd written it after the election. Like, even if she approached the same story, she would do different things. So she has this setup of this winter storm, and she has this quote in her book in her notebook from Camus about being in a winter.

[Andrew]

I think it's pronounced Camus. I can get a chance to correct you first time. And I think it's pronounced Albert Camus.

[Craig]

I would eat that cheese. And she says that at the time in her life, she was also kind of in a winter of, you know, of her own. She had gotten divorced after 28 years of marriage. Her age, her longtime agent, and, like, multiple friends had recently passed away. Her dog had died, and she was just, like, in a real rough place. And this, like, quote spoke to her, and then the book spoke, you know, the idea for the book spoke to her. And then she starts kind of coming up with these characters that fill in, you know, the premise. I suppose she's interested in telling a story about mature love, about people who are older, later in life finding love. And the Chilean writer is based on a friend of hers who had passed away a few years prior. And I think that's mostly it. On the setup. She, you know, in one of the interviews, she talks about some of her sources for some of the information, like, a lot of it's based on her own experience. Some of it's based on this book called Enrique's Journey. That's the Mexican border crossing stuff she spoke with.

[Andrew]

Yeah, there's a, there's a very specific detailing of, of the way that, that somebody crosses the border in this book.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And it's like, I think even if the details aren't like, wouldn't necessarily be the same now. I think that the overall sentiment which is that the harder you lock it down, the more like resourceful people become in working around it. I think that is still broadly true.

[Craig]

Yep, yep, yep, yep. And two funny things that I found. One, this is going to be about that like you know, winter romance, late in life romance. She, this is her talking about why this woman Lucia likes Richard. I'm sure I'll learn more about these people. She believes he is a wounded man in need of a good woman that has irresistible appeal to most Chilean women. We love projects. She says she seems like a funny lady. And then she is asked about why she said it in Brooklyn. This is from the book pages interview. She is long lived in California. She says that her daughter in law is from Brooklyn and she spends holidays with her son and her daughter in law with her daughter in law's big loud Italian family.

[Andrew]

And she says love that, love that movie.

[Craig]

She says, quote I like New York City, dot, dot dot for a week or two.

[Andrew]

I think that's fair.

[Craig]

And she, you know, she has her reasons why it's like no, I don't want to be there alone. It's too busy, it's too fast. Where I live in California is quiet. But I just thought that way to put it.

[Andrew]

Tremendously enjoyed For a period of three years of my life living near New.

[Craig]

York, very near it. Yes. You'd have to pay money to go.

[Andrew]

In now and living in Jersey City. People in Brooklyn who live like pretty much the exact same, they still look.

[Craig]

Down on you though, don't they?

[Andrew]

From, from Manhattan. Yeah, it was, it was as though we lived in like on the North Pole or something. Like it's like you just got, you got treated. And listen, people in Jersey, they deserve all the guff they get. But I think in that specific sense the Brooklyn versus Jersey City thing is fake.

[Craig]

Oh, it's definitely fake.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

There are plenty of other things that are way more real.

[Andrew]

If anything, Jersey City is better than Brooklyn.

[Craig]

E Hoo. I think we should take a quick break before you say anything else to consult our lawyer and then we'll be right back with the rest of the book this show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Hey Andrew, what are some of your relationship green flags as opposed to red flags? Yeah, we often hear about red flags that we should avoid. But what if we focused more on looking for green flags in friends and partners? You know, you look like you're not sure what they look like, so let me tell you. Therapy can help you identify green flags, Andrew. They actively practice them in your relationships and embody the green flag. Energy yourself. Whether you're dating, married, building a friendship, or just working on yourself, it's time to form relationships that love you back.

[Andrew]

Andrew, I am, I am tempted to say that if someone on a date with me said that they were like searching me for green flags, I would think that maybe that was a red flag.

[Craig]

Okay, I don't. I think maybe this is. Maybe we can find some utility in this concept here because I do think that therapy itself is a great tool for lots of folks in my life. You know, it can help you learn positive coping skills, help you realize when you're stuck, you need a change. But maybe you can look for a friend. Look for the green flags in your friendship. They can support you get out of a rut. You know, that's what friends are for, Andrew. And therapy can help you identify the friends that'll stick with you. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give better help a try. It's all online, convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Fill out their questionnaire and get matched with a licensed therapist. Bingo Bango. That's my new thing. It's Bingo Bango. That's just mine though.

[Andrew]

Bingo bango.

[Craig]

BetterHelp Discover your relationships green flags with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com overdue today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp h lp.com overdue so, Andrew, I have a. I have here an Ask Reddit thread from 10 years ago. R. Ask Reddit what's the best thing about winter? And do you know what so many people mention?

[Andrew]

Snow?

[Craig]

Bugs. No, bugs. Everyone loves that bugs. And mosquitoes mostly take a break. Specifically mosquitoes when it gets cold. They're so excited.

[Andrew]

I hate to break it to these people, but some of our winter since we moved to Philadelphia have been warm enough that I can't go out back in January and find mosquitoes.

[Craig]

Now this is, this is a 10 year old Reddit thread. So things.

[Andrew]

That's true. Yeah. The climate had changed less.

[Craig]

Andy McSwag asked this question 10 years ago is all. Andy?

[Andrew]

Is that his Christian name?

[Craig]

Don't know. I don't know what they make.

[Andrew]

Is that his government name set up? Did they change his name to. Did they change his name to McSwag at Ellis Island? Like, where did. Where did he get this?

[Craig]

What? I bring this. What is the. Like, what are the wintry vibes of this winter book? Because I know, like, the snowstorm was part of her initial setup. So, like, what is the. Is. Is it the winter of my content to read the rest of this book, or is it the winter of my discontent? Because it's unbelievable.

[Andrew]

I think it would be. I think it would be the winter of your. Of your content. It's a nice. It's a nice. The winter of your hashtag content in our case. But yeah, it is. It summoned the feeling of living through this storm.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

Because I do remember winter being, like, really mild up until that point.

[Craig]

Yeah. Okay.

[Andrew]

And then suddenly getting all that stuff dumped on you, and then I had the specific experience of, like, going out into it and in deciding to do that, just like being completely alone and isolated in a place that I was used to never not seeing people in. You know, and that. And that's the. That's the thing that this is cultivating is, like, the events that happen are only possible because these three characters who we meet and spend most of our time with in this story can only go out and do all of these things because nobody else is out doing anything because of how big and bad this storm was.

[Craig]

Is it one wild night? Is it a few nights? Is it.

[Andrew]

It's a few. It's a few wild nights. And then, you know, you do a little bit of time jumping in the last chapter in the epilogue, which is all just, like, wrapping it all up to make sure that nobody who's morally good is punished and everybody who's morally bad is. Is punished. Yeah, in a way that's very, like, neat and like, bow tying. But also, you know, if It's. If it's 2017, I am probably cool with reading a story where, like, a bad people get retribution that's, like, meted out by the universe. You know what I mean?

[Craig]

Yeah. You've mentioned already that there's, like, a heisty thing, that there's maybe some, like, kind of zaniness to this. The reviews that I read were mostly kind of middle of the road. Like, folks for whom the whole book didn't work, they recognize that it's like Allende. So there's good stuff there.

[Andrew]

But they was there, like, a number of stars out of.

[Craig]

Oh, I Have those for later.

[Andrew]

You have those for later. I should go get my guitar while you talk.

[Craig]

Yep. But these reviews kind of strike a balance between, like, yes, I know that Allende is talented. I like that these. These themes that she is talking about. But they.

[Andrew]

Here I am. I'm back.

[Craig]

Okay, you're back. They are a little unsure about the overall, like, tones of the book working well together, or they don't love the, like, zaniness of the. Whatever the present day premise is. So can you, like, fill me in a little bit more on, like, who these people are? What are they getting themselves into?

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

And is that. And is it working for you?

[Andrew]

So the. The opening of the book. We've got. We've got Lucia Mraz, who is a. She is from Chile. She's living in Brooklyn. She's. She's lived all over the place. She kind of initially fled the, like, the military takeover of Chile.

[Craig]

70S. Yeah.

[Andrew]

I think in the 70s. Yeah. And has kind of been, you know, she. She has been back to Chile. She's been in Canada. Now she's in Brooklyn. She's been kind of all over the place. She's living in this brownstone house that is owned by this guy, Richard Bowmaster, whose full name is used pretty frequently in the book, because I think that Allende knows how sick a name Richard.

[Craig]

Bowmaster have his own line of exercise equipment.

[Andrew]

It really does sound like I was for as many Bowflex, like, commercials as I. That I. That I saw as a child of the. Of the late 80s and early 90s. I could not possibly hope to tell you what that machine did.

[Craig]

No. It's a torture device. I've seen more. I've seen more Nordic tracks out in the wild than bow flexes.

[Andrew]

Mm.

[Craig]

And no, I don't know why. What was it? Well, why was it a Bowflex? What was just like you.

[Andrew]

It just. It was. It was tension involved. Like, you pulled on it, and it made your muscles big.

[Craig]

This was before people were just doing, like, Pilates in their own house.

[Andrew]

I guess this is before somebody on TikTok in a full face of makeup could tell you that everything you learned about working out was wrong.

[Craig]

That's true. And they're probably right. Let me eat what I want. I'm gonna lift this bag of cat litter.

[Andrew]

So Richard Bowmaster is a. Is like a professor, and he has kind of invited Lucia to teach at this institution for a year. And she is. She has come. We'll find out a little bit more about, like, why she's kind of feeling the need to shake things up and live her life later on in the book. But she kind of in knowing Richard Bowmaster from afar and corresponding with him, it's kind of like, picked up some, like, some vibes, you know, maybe something could be happening here. They're both like, I think late 50s or early 60s. Like, that's the kind of phase that we're talking about where, you know, middle, middle age is passing by. But you're still, you know, you. Major deterioration of your body has, like, mostly not happened yet. I don't know. I said that as weird as I possibly could. I hope that everybody noticed.

[Craig]

But yes, I know, like, a portion of your life that you might just like, be like, well, that was my life has. Has already happened. And now you're like. But also something new.

[Andrew]

Yeah, no, just. Just like watching like, my. My parents. Parents age and like, that. That point that people hit in their, like, mid.

[Craig]

Oh, no, I know what. I know what you.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah, so it's, you know, it's. Well, well before that sort of thing happens. But also old enough that you're always thinking about how old you are.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah, but she's not in the am I old enough to get into this bar way.

[Andrew]

Right? Yes. Right. So she is. She is. She has come and she's moved in. He is, like, offered a basement apartment to her, and she's. She is accepted. But once they're kind of near each other, things kind of. Things don't really work out. It's not that there was. And it's not even that there was an explicit rejection. It's just that Richard Bowmaster is a very, you know, he's very set in his ways. He's very sort of withdrawn and doesn't put himself out there a lot. And whatever. Whatever it was that she had sensed in their. In their correspondence has not really worked out in her life.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

So they're both stuck inside because of this winter storm and kind of. Kind of thinking, you know, we're stuck inside. Boy, would be nice. Boy, it'd be nice if we had a romantic relationship. So we could, like, you know, we. We could do something fun with all of this stuck inside time that we have, but things have not worked out that way. Richard Bowmaster has four cats, and one of them gets under the sink and drinks antifreeze and needs to be rushed to the vet. We're never told that this cat dies, so I assume that it does not.

[Craig]

Okay, good.

[Andrew]

Just for people who need to know about that in stories, I think the cat is probably arguably, okay.

[Craig]

Just fine, I'm sure.

[Andrew]

But as Richard Bowmaster is driving back from the vet, he. In this. In this snowstorm with all the, you know, the roads barely cleared and nobody else on the road, he rear ends this Lexus and damages the trunk of it pretty severely so that it will not close anymore. A, like, small, young woman gets. She is from this. This is Evelyn, who is from Guatemala that we find out later. But she gets. They can't really communicate, but she is clearly really stressed out. He tries to give her his, like, insurance information, and she just leaves. So he. He goes inside, and before too long, Evelyn, like, looking at the address on the. On the card that he just barely managed to give her, comes. Comes back and comes in, and she, you know, is mostly. She is hard to understand, mostly trying to speak Spanish, which he sort of speaks. But she. Well, he speaks. He speaks Portuguese, actually. So.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

He's, like, trying to understand her, but between, like, a stammer that she has and kind of a, you know, a small language barrier, they just can't figure it out. So Richard is like, who do I know who can talk to this person? Oh, I'm gonna call. I'm gonna get Lucia in. In here so we can. So we can talk. And it comes to light that Evelyn is driving around in this Lexus with the corpse of a woman in the trunk.

[Craig]

Whoa.

[Andrew]

Wrapped up in a rug.

[Craig]

Whoa. How early is this revealed? Like, early early.

[Andrew]

This is, like, first. First, like, quarter of the book.

[Craig]

Okay, okay.

[Andrew]

It's pretty. It's fairly early.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

And Evelyn. They decide pretty early on that Evelyn is, like, in over her head. She works for these. These, like, rich white people who hate each other. They have a son who has, like, cerebral palsy. And that's been a big, like, source of angst between the two of them. Like, the. The husband clearly kind of wants to be rid of. Of both of them, like, his wife and his son.

[Craig]

Cool.

[Andrew]

In whatever. Whatever way that happens. And they. You know, they. They sort of discern if they send Evelyn back into this situation with this car that she wasn't supposed to be driving with this dead body in the trunk. Like, it's accident that Evelyn was out in this car at all. And then Richard just happens to rear end her. And did she know there was a.

[Craig]

Body in the trunk?

[Andrew]

She didn't know where there was a body.

[Craig]

Okay, okay, okay.

[Andrew]

She didn't know there was a body, and she found out that there was a body in it. And now that the car has been Wrecked in a way that made it clear that Evelyn took it out when she wasn't supposed to have it out. Like, now she is, like, implicated and doesn't want to go back.

[Craig]

Yeah, okay.

[Andrew]

To the house. And. Yeah, this is.

[Craig]

This is very hijinksy. I can hear the Danny Elfman music playing.

[Andrew]

And Lucia, like, really seems to know a lot about how to get away with disposing of a dead body and keeps. And keeps saying, don't. Like, don't worry about it. Don't. Don't ask me questions about why I know all this stuff.

[Craig]

Oh.

[Andrew]

So they. They set out on a course of action, like, pretty. Pretty quickly where they decide, okay, we're gonna get. We're gonna get rid of this body, get rid of this car. Like, we're gonna drive upstate. We're gonna take advantage of the snowstorm being, like, shutting everything down. We're gonna go up to the cabin of a friend of Richard's who's, like, out of the country because he knows it's super remote and that nobody's gonna look around up there and that there are places to kind of dump a car and a body where people aren't going to find them. They're gonna go up, and they're just gonna make everything go away, is the plan. And as the three of them talk in, like, Richard's apartment at first, and then while they're on the road driving upstate, the structure of the book is, like, a lot of it takes place in the present, and then all three of them are just kind of swapping stories the whole time as they go, because there's a lot of, kind of interrelated. Like, all the stories involve, like, South American countries. It is mentioned multiple times that, you know, it was. It was the policy of the United States in this era, in the, like, the 60s, 70s, 80s, to just get in there. Leftist governments and overthrow them.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

With military dictatorships. And so that's kind of a common thread that's running through everything. Not. Not that these people have any, like, animus against America specifically, but it's just like. It's the story of so many of these countries. The stories are all intertwined. And so, you know, all three of these people are from different backgrounds. Like, Richard was in Brazil for a long time. Lucia's from Chile, and then, like I said, Evelyn's from. From Venezuela. But they've all got. They've all got threads in Guatemala. They've all got common threads and, like, shared background.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Stuff. Like, one of the. One of the interesting things and something I actually didn't know ton about, but which struck me as relevant in the, in the era that we're in is Richard talks a lot about his dad, who was like a big like pro immigration agitator during like the Reagan era and is like talking about coming together with a lot of different, different, like pro immigration and also like religious groups that were all trying to like, take care of people who were being displaced in this era and like. Sure. To the United States. I need to read more about that because I feel like we are in a time where strange bedfellows are going to become more necessary.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

To. Yeah. To make like good things happen.

[Craig]

I mean, you know, we don't need to get super current eventsy. But you.

[Andrew]

No, no, no, no, no. Sorry.

[Craig]

You know, but you just, you see that in even the groups that are responding negatively to things like, you know, diminishing the USAID department and office. Like, there are a whole lot of groups whose mission is alleviating pain and suffering, like, just feeling like there should maybe be less pain and suffering in the world. And they don't all have the same politics and they don't all want to do that the same way, but they do think that the tax money that they are, you know, paying should maybe go to some of that. True. And yeah, it's, it's gonna, it's going to lead to people having to find, you know, really acknowledge that common cause that is there, even if you disagree on some other stuff. What, what's interesting to me as you bring this up is that like, even just to name check that, like in, I think it's the volume one Brooklyn interview, she talks about, like, how much of this stuff is based on either her own experience. It's not like she is, is like, let me crack open a book and then go. There are a few things that she went to go research, but like, you know, so she didn't make up the storm in New York, she didn't make up the places in Brooklyn. She didn't make up the lakes that they go to. You know, so much of that stuff is based in her lived experience in a way. And then she is like going off and finding the connections she needs to, to like, you know, flesh out a character. But for her, like, a lot of this stuff is very, very real. It is not just, oh, I came up with a zany premise. And then let me attach some because I do think maybe that is at the heart of some of the, like the WaPo review and the New York Times. Review. Ron Charles and Elizabeth Winkler, respectively, are both like, you know, the, the disconnect between these, like, really, you know, tragic or moving backstories and this kind of zany, you know, rom com plot in the, in the present tense just does not work for them. And I think some of that may just be like, she's interested in this setup and she's gonna explore it, but also she's invested in, like, all of this lived experience that she has a lot of immediate access to.

[Andrew]

I also think there, there are elements of, like, juxtaposing all the farcical stuff with the heavy stuff that kind of makes it hit a little bit harder because.

[Craig]

Okay, cool.

[Andrew]

Because. Because you read some of it and you're like, oh, I was, I am surprised that that's where we decided to go.

[Craig]

Sure. Okay, sure. And it feel, it didn't. That didn't feel like, why am I being pulled into left field? It felt like you were deliberately kind of, you know, made to look in one direction so that she could hit you from the other. And it worked.

[Andrew]

I'm not like, I don't know whether I'm saying that latter thing that you just said or if I am just, like, finding myself in left field and looking around and being like, hey, this is neat. I didn't expect to be out here in left field.

[Craig]

Okay, sure.

[Andrew]

Thanks for bringing me here.

[Craig]

Sure, sure, sure.

[Andrew]

It's just like, I'm cool to be pulled along for the journey and reading the whole last chapter and Epil, where it's just like, yeah, yada, yada, yada. Everybody was fine. Everybody who's good is fine. Everybody who's bad is dead or in prison or whatever. Like, it, it's. It's like I said, all wrapped, all wrapped up. Very neat. But you're like, okay, yeah, like, this is fine. I don't, I don't need this to be like, everybody ends up miserable, but, like, two people are in love, and so that's like the, the seed of hope that, like, you could just do a book that. Where everybody ends up, like, happy at the end.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

It's fine.

[Craig]

Okay, so tell me more about how they get to that point then.

[Andrew]

Well, so, so, yeah, you hear about all of their. All their backstories. Evelyn grows up in Guatemala. She has an older brother who is really aimless and doesn't have a lot of, like, not a lot of options in society. And so he turns to, like, a gang. Ms. 13 is the gang that's brought.

[Craig]

Up in the book.

[Andrew]

Which, like, gives his life like, gives him some drive and gives his life. His life some sort of meaning. But then he ends up dead for a reason that is never explained. Just. And it's said in the book, like, it could be literally anything. Like, he could have betrayed somebody. He could have just, like, said the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

But he ends up dead. And then everybody in his family is also endangered now because of, like, just the way that the gangs, like, take their vengeance on people for being wronged. And she ends up being sent to the United States to kind of protect her from this gang violence as a refugee, as a. Like, a, you know, a teenager. You follow Lucia around. It's, you know, she. She gets married to a guy who she doesn't really like. She really would like him to love her and, you know, tries to make it as convenient as possible for him to love her, and it just doesn't really work out. She's also taking care of, you know, an ailing mom. And her mom is ailing because she had a brother who, during the. He. He was, like. He was a kind of a leftist agitator. And during the military overthrow of the government in Chile, he disappears. And Lucia's mom is keeping, you know, keeping hope alive that he is. You know, he's gonna come back to them. But he. He is one of these many, many people in this, like, transition between governments that just ends up being disappeared and nobody ever finds out what happened to him. And that ends. That ends up being a major, like, motivating factor for Lucia that we'll. We'll find out about later. And then Richard. Yeah, he's in. He goes to Brazil. He's there just as the Brazilian government is starting to kind of loosen up. And he's there for, like, the first, like, free democratic elections in Brazil in, like, the 80s, he says. And he meets a Brazilian woman and falls in love with her, marries her. She has a huge family of, like, 30 people who's always up in his business that he.

[Craig]

Oh, boy.

[Andrew]

They appreciate. But, like, you know, they have a daughter, and then his wife, like, miscarries a few times, and then they have another son, and the son, like, does a sudden infant death syndrome thing at, like, a month old, and they're. And so he descends into, like, alcoholism, and he feels like. And as he is driving home, sort of hungover from, like, cheating on his wife with somebody, his daughter, like, runs out to greet him, and he runs her over with the car. So, like, he's what? Yeah. And so he. He's got this. And then, like, his. His wife ends up taking her own life later because she is just completely gutted by all of this stuff that has happened. And he, like, uproots her from Brazil and moves to New York with her, and so she doesn't have a support structure that her family was providing. He's carrying around for, like, 25 years all the guilt of all this stuff that has happened that, you know, some of. Some of which he is directly responsible for and some. Some of. Some of which he is. He is not. But that. That is. The book presents it as the. The reason why he is so withdrawn and, yeah, really, like, sticking stuck to his routines. It's just like he's. He is feeling so awful about that entire, like, phase of his life that he can't really let anything else in. And so the. The way that the farce intersects with all this stuff is like having to drive a body to upstate New York and, like, break his routines and do all this different stuff and be in Lucia, like, presence, kind of against his own will, has brought him out of his shell a little bit and made him realize that, like, he's still got a life that can be lived and that it's. He doesn't necessarily need to be defined by all this guilt about. About what happened. It's a. His thread, in particular, is a fine line to walk because of the three characters, he's the one who is the most directly responsible for his own misery.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

Not to say that he's completely responsible for.

[Craig]

You know, it is not. It is not a, like, systemic government thing as much as some. Something bad happened.

[Andrew]

Yeah, like a bunch of bad stuff happened.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

You know, addiction is not a. Is not a thing that people can control like that. There is a. The book does succeed in making you feel sympathetic toward Richard. I think part of the way it does that is by not telling you any of that stuff that I just told you until, like, really late in the book when you have a good. When you already care for him, when you've already been. Yeah. Made to sympathize with him.

[Craig]

You know, you've already been like. You know, it seems clear to me that Isabel Allende loves the movie Little Miss Sunshine. Like, that. I think just. We gotta, like, transport this dead person, and then everybody's gonna learn along the way. And maybe there's, like, a dance number at the end.

[Andrew]

You know what movie I've not watched or thought about in, like, 18 years is little Miss Sunshine.

[Craig]

Yeah, it was everywhere. Because, like, I don't remember exactly where that intersects with Steve Carell Office.

[Andrew]

Yeah, because Steve Carell was it and like, 40 year old virgin and like, the Office were all hitting at the same time. It was like, oh, hey, here's Michael Scott, goofy goof boy, being sad in a van with all these people, like, don't you want. Don't you want to see this movie?

[Craig]

And, like, Greg Kinnear is there. And then, like, all. Who's Paul Dano? Tell me more like, like, he doesn't talk.

[Andrew]

Oh, my goodness.

[Craig]

I don't know how that movie has aged at all.

[Andrew]

I don't know, but I think something. Some things age by, like, Booth Tarkington kind of disappearing into the mists of history and nobody really thinks or talks about.

[Craig]

You were just something about the, like, zaniness. But feelings of transporting a corpse somewhere and then people, like, learn lessons about themselves. Literally. I reached into my brain and that was the first. I, like, rooted my hand around in there and that was just the first thing that came out. I'm sure there are other.

[Andrew]

That makes sense.

[Craig]

I mean, it's not a Weekend at Bernie's movie.

[Andrew]

You know, you are already prone to, like, opening your mouth and a bunch of, like, stuff from 2011 just kind of dumps out of it onto the floor. Really true and so lying. I'm not surprised that Little Miss Sunshine is the pool that you, that you.

[Craig]

I don't know what other movies have done it. I'm sure other movies have. Is everyone, like, keeping their cool? It sounds like Lucia is, like, oddly cool at all of this.

[Andrew]

Like, well, so, okay, I was, I was going to get to that next. Lucia is oddly, oddly cool and knows a lot about, like, rigor mortise and transporting a body. And they get up to the, the cabin and get to the point where they're going to, like, dump this, this corpse in the, in the lake. And Lucia says, okay, if you don't want the corpse to, like, float back up out, you have to, like, cut the stomach open so water can get in there. And at that, at that point, that's.

[Craig]

A better tip than, like, tying stuff to it, because people will find the stuff you've tied to it.

[Andrew]

Sure. Yeah, right. But. But that, I mean, I don't. I don't know. I haven't done this before, but it's. She, like I said, you know, she deflects up until this point, like, every time she's been asked why she knows so much about this stuff. And it, you know, it all comes together at this exact moment. That she has written two books about people who disappeared during the military coup in Chile in the 1970s.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

Because her brother disappeared and because her mom is, like, so driven and preoccupied with it.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

And in the course of researching this book and, like, testifying about the stuff that she learned while researching for this book, you just learn everything you can possibly learn about how to disappear a corpse.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

And that's how she knows.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And it's so kind of. It's a. It's a really striking moment. I can. I can see finding it not effective, but I worked for you. Was really was struck by, like, yeah, okay, now we're doing this, like, I don't know, like, a Desperate Housewives murdered plot. And suddenly we're bringing in, like, especially knowing, having read Allende's first book and knowing how all this stuff, like, hits home for her, like, bringing that. That specific storyline into the, like, the body disposal storyline in this way, at this moment.

[Craig]

Well, and I thought.

[Andrew]

I thought worked.

[Craig]

I was waiting. I'm surprised by. In a positive way, like, I was waiting for it to be. And she had to, like, you know, she had to kill some people to stay alive. Like, I feel like, Like.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I think. I think the book kind of leads you in that direction a little bit.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

Which also made this work is like, oh, I didn't. I did not. I did not see that one coming.

[Craig]

And I think that is the part that is like, one of the things she says about her friend who had passed away was that she was a. A journalist who did a lot of writing on abuses under a military. Under the military dictatorship. So it's like, she was never going to be somebody who, like, had to murder to survive because she's honoring her friend with this character. But that is a bit of a zag in a setup like this where.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

If everybody's, you know, she's. She's diving into these kind of, like, all these folks have a tragic, hard backstory. You're going to expect that someone will have had to, like, you know, do something awful to get by. And instead it's no. She has just stared at the awful long enough that she knows enough about it.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Yeah. And then. And then Evelyn story is the, you know, the hardship of crossing the border and then existing in the United States as somebody with no documentation. Like.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

Kind of. Kind of surviving based on the, like, presumed indifference of the system. But then if something happens that, like, brings the eye of that system onto you specifically for some reason, then everything kicks into gear and you are prone to getting, like, sent back to a place that might have been dangerous to you or just, like, misunderstood or mistreated by even. Even in this, like, mid to late Obama era period that the book is covering, like, being sucked up into this system that is just, like, straining under the, the load of, like, the sheer number of people who are trying to move through it. And even if you accepted that people in this system have good intentions, which I don't think, like, under no circumstances do you need to hand it to them.

[Craig]

Like, do you mean they're just working in the system? Not the people.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah, like, like the people who. Yeah, the people who are working in the immigration courts and then, yeah, in ICE and all the other, like, bodies that are doing this stuff. I'm not saying you have to hand it to them, but even if you assume good intentions from all these people is a system that is just churning through people and not seeing them as people, because that is all it. Like, that's what it has the capacity to do. That's what many elements of it have been designed to do. And yeah, her whole story being, like, afraid of her employers afraid, like, she's in this employment situation in the first place because she had to, like, run away from living with her mom in Chicago because she went to the hospital for something that was not her fault. And, like, and the system was suddenly like, oh, yeah, I remember that you exist and now I'm gonna start, like, deportation proceedings against you. That, that is, that is the thread with her. And yeah, all the, all these things come out over the course of this kind of like, body hiding heist. And they all, like, they all just. And at this point, okay, everything has been, everything. All these threads have been brought together. Mission accomplished. Now we're going to make sure that everybody who's good in the story has a good ending and everybody who's bad in the story has bad ending. So they all think better of burying the corpse in the, you know, in the car, in the, in the lake and letting Evelyn's boss get away with presumably killing her. So they drive her, like the body up to a different place and, and put it in a canoe and kind of send it out, which. Which feels kind of sufficiently. Funeral. How do you pronounce funeral? Funeral.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

It's one of those words that I see written a lot but don't say much.

[Craig]

No, usually you don't have to say that word. Yeah.

[Andrew]

And so, okay, we're, you know, we're. We're going to make sure that Evelyn does not get blamed for something that she didn't do, but we are going to make sure that whoever did it is going to get suffered for it later. Because do they all presume, we're police, we're going to leave all the clues?

[Craig]

Yes. Do they all presume or do they have any hard knowledge that it was her boss who, like, killed this person?

[Andrew]

Well, so what? So what ends up happening is Evelyn's boss's wife, who is, like, drunk all the time and super high strung, but, like, mostly cares about her son and it lives in fear of her husband. The. The person who is dead in the trunk of the car is like a. Like a fitness instructor of the instructor of the husband's who is, like, having an affair with him and is, like, three months pregnant. And so her plan was to go over, like, she's found a key to this woman's apartment in her husband's thing things, and her plan was to go over and say, you could run off with my husband. I don't care, but I want to use my knowledge of this to blackmail him into making sure that he continues providing for me and my son.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

But things escalate and she ends. And so the wife ends up shooting the fitness instructor.

[Craig]

Oh, no.

[Andrew]

So it wasn't. It wasn't the employer who did it. But then we find out that he was a human trafficker. And so, no. So it's good that he gets blamed for this crime and.

[Craig]

Oh, boy.

[Andrew]

And gets, like, chased out of the country and is being, like, hunted down by the FBI.

[Craig]

Oh, my God.

[Andrew]

But yeah, every, like, basically everybody at the end, everybody kind of fills each other in on all the stuff that happened, and everyone's like, okay, cool, we're all gonna keep this a secret so that the people who deserve punishment in, like, a cosmic sense get it. Okay, so Evelyn, yeah, like, she goes and hides with Lucia's daughter in Miami for a while and then eventually is able to come back up to Brooklyn. Like, the book ends before that can happen. But they're, like, going to meet her when the book ends, Lucia and Richard having, like, Lucia having resolved never to be with somebody who's gonna waste her time again because she, like, has cancer that she recovers from. And so she's feeling very like, I gotta live in the moment. I gotta do, you know, everything I want, when I want to do it. And then Richard having been brought out of a shell by this, like, body hiding heist scenario, like, they are both into each other and in love finally, and they're together and they're happy. And Richard's dad is like, I can't believe you didn't bring me along for this corpse heist. This sounds like it would have been awesome. Even though he's like, 90 years.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Like, everybody ends up having a happy ending, pretty much. And, yeah, all the. All the horrors you discover are the things that kind of inform who these people are, but then they use those to, you know, to find new. New hope and new love and new life. And that's. And that's where, like, things. Things end with them all feeling this way. And also, It's May of 2016, and we're all talking about Donald Trump and immigration all the time. And that's. That's kind of where the book leaves us.

[Craig]

Sure. That. Okay, okay. That, like, the. These individuals deserve their happy ending, but that doesn't. Maybe that doesn't fix the big.

[Andrew]

Yeah. I don't know that it's saying anything big. I'm just kind of drawing that. No, no, I'm there at the end.

[Craig]

I don't know. Based on.

[Andrew]

She doesn't.

[Craig]

She doesn't need to put that in there if she doesn't want to, you know.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And I think that's. That. That is possibly one of the things where she's. She's talking about. It would have been different if it. If it had been written after the.

[Craig]

That's true.

[Andrew]

Or whatever. Like, I think that, you know, and any. Any, like, inference making that I am doing is happening because of my own, like, knowledge of how events happen.

[Craig]

How dare you use your brain to make inferences.

[Andrew]

Yeah, that's stupid. I shouldn't do that.

[Craig]

She, you know, there are a couple places in interviews where she's asked, like, what are her messages or, you know, things? And she kind of, you know, has a very allergic reaction to the notion that she would, like, have a specific message other than the text itself.

[Andrew]

Like, the big message is just, like, you know, what we should all learn about history and, like, what happened and why so that we can, like, not do it again.

[Craig]

Yeah, there's that.

[Andrew]

Which is the thing that feels true about it in 2025 as opposed to 2017.

[Craig]

She's talking about, like, wanting to. To write about immigration. And she says, like, it's not, like, let's not talk about this as, like, 17 million people. Let's talk about this as a whole bunch of individual people. And, you know, she's a writer. What can she do? She can give you that person's perspective. She says people are people, and each one of them has a name, a story, a face, a family. And when we can see the individual, maybe we can relate to the issue in a very different form. And I do, you know, that's what the artist can do. I like that. When she's asked if her, you know, her works have feminist messages, this book included, she says, I never try to give a message in my fiction. I write strong women who overcome great obstacles and manage to do so without bitterness. Those women don't preach feminism, they live it. Just interesting, you know, self assessment there on her part.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Making the, the systemic personal is an interesting approach because I just, I just feel like this is, this is the leopards eating faces like meme. Right. It's like there are a lot of people, whether they are, you know, explicitly aligned with the conservative movement in America or, or not, there are a lot of people for whom systemic stuff is all fake until it happens to you. And then you're like, oh, this is, this, this seems like a problem. Why is this happening to me? What, like, what can we, what can we do about it? So yeah, like for better or worse, that is, that is a path to reaching some people who would not otherwise be reachable by like, like statistics or the disembodied description of a problem that they don't have any like first hand experience of. Yeah, it's just. Yeah, it's. It is too bad that it needs to be that way. But it is a tool that you can use to build a movement.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

So, yeah, I don't know.

[Craig]

I have a few reviews for you, Andrew.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

They come from a website called Goodreads and they. Yep. And they all have not one, not two, but three stars.

[Andrew]

Whoa, are they. Wait, my straps in the way. Three star Goodreads review.

[Craig]

They are. In fact, they're almost all pretty similar.

[Andrew]

Been a while since we did that.

[Craig]

That's true. New Year New, you do it all the time now.

[Andrew]

New Year, New Year Old, us all the old bits are back. What struck you funny about this one?

[Craig]

I didn't read it. Mine struck me funny was when she said that she liked New York for a week or two. But most of these folks all have pretty much the same take, so I won't read them all word for word. You know, Angela says I really liked each of these characters was taken by their experiences. But what didn't work for me was the present circumstances that keep them connected. Asil said the event that brings these characters together and keeps them together feels almost farcical. He is saying that as if It's a bad thing. Apparently. Bam cooks the books. That's the username. Bam cooks the books.

[Andrew]

This is Emeril Lagasse's book review blog.

[Craig]

Well, it could also be Emeril Lagasse's, like, embezzling blog.

[Andrew]

Although actually really sick. It's like, bam, your books are cooked.

[Craig]

Although I greatly admire Ms. Allende's storytelling skills and have enjoyed many of her books, this one did not work for me. Their history seemed so depressing, violent, and hopeless. The present by comparison, rather silly. The plot contrived to bring the lovers together. And, you know, the. The reviews and The Times and WaPo both have it kind of like they're uncomfortable with how severe and serious the backstories feel relative to this kind of romantic comedy premise.

[Andrew]

This is a scenario, and this happens a lot. I agree with what they're observing. I understand what they are saying, and I just don't think that they're right about it.

[Craig]

Can you just, like, is. Are the backstories. Does it, like, alternate chapter? Chapter? Does it, like, what is the vibe of going back and forth between the past? I know you said they're swapping stories in the car and whatnot.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it's like. It is arranged. Like, you hear the stories about the past as the characters are relaying them to each other. So you get a passage from, like, you know, we're in this hotel, and there are fleas, and we all stay up talking.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And them staying up talking takes the form of, like, each of them taking another round through some element of their. Their backstory. All the chapters are headed with, like, the character's name, and then the. The place that they are and the time that things are taking place.

[Craig]

Cool.

[Andrew]

And then when they are. When they are all together, like, telling backstories, it's all, like, nested. So it's like, you know, Lucia and Richard and Evevelyn, upstate New York, 2016.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And then Lucia, Chile, like, 2007 or whatever. Like, it's all, you know, it's presented pretty clearly, so you know what's going on. But it's all, like. It is. It is linear in a way, in the sense that, like, you are getting information about each character at the same time as the other characters are getting that information. Yeah.

[Craig]

Yes. Yes. Yes.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

You know, I mean.

[Craig]

No, I do know what you mean.

[Andrew]

Yeah, totally. Like, yes. The juxtaposition is. Is jarring. I think it is. I think that makes it work.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

But I get why you would find it distracting. I just don't think like the kind of book there's a big slog for me. It's like, yeah, miserable things have happened in the past, so I need to make all these made up people who I made up for my pretend book miserable. Also.

[Craig]

I could see, too. No, to that point.

[Andrew]

I invented these characters for my story, and I think it's okay for them to be happy in the face of, like, historical atrocities, you know?

[Craig]

Well, and I can see also, like, I have not, you know, I've not read other Allende, but I could see this also being a thing that, you know, she's written like 20 books. Like, more. Right. Like, if she wants to not do it the same way as before, like, she can do it differently sometimes.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Yeah. Just do a weird one where people do like a Coen brothers movie while. While they watch Loma Sunshine and then like, talk about their backstories.

[Andrew]

Like a Coen brothers movie, but with, like a happy end. How many?

[Craig]

Not many of them.

[Andrew]

Some of them, I guess.

[Craig]

How does old brother were art thou ends? Are they happy?

[Andrew]

I mean, they're back together. I don't know if they're happy.

[Craig]

Yeah, they're bonafide.

[Andrew]

They're back together. They're bona fide. They got a number one hit.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

On the radio. Because they sang into a man's can.

[Craig]

But they are men of constant sorrow is the problem.

[Andrew]

But that song is, like, pretty upbeat for being so.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Again, the juxtaposition rears its head. We're back to.

[Craig]

Back to reference.

[Andrew]

Basic spec. Yeah, references.

[Craig]

Well, thanks for reading this book, Andrew. Thanks for telling me about it.

[Andrew]

You're welcome. I'm glad to have finished it. We have been recording for an hour and four minutes. I finished the book an hour and five minutes ago, but I think for all of that, the episode has been fine. So thank you for helping.

[Craig]

Yeah, no problem. Thanks everybody, for listening. If you want to tell us your favorite thing about winter, you can send us an email. Overdue podmail.com. i was reading articles about good things about winter and many of them cited sweatpants. Just sweatpants, gang.

[Andrew]

You can wear sweatpants whenever.

[Craig]

Think about it. It doesn't just have to be winter. Treat yourself. Please find us on social media. Verdupod. Thanks to Nick Laurentis, who composed our theme music. Andrew. If folks want to know more about the show, where do they go?

[Andrew]

Overdue podcast.com is that Internet website. Hit it. For episodes that we've. For books that we've read in the past, for the books that we're going to read. In the future. Our February schedule is up there now. February, Sorry. Also up there we have a link to Patreon. That's patreon.com overduepod if you prefer to type it directly into your address bar in Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator or whatever browser that that you use. Yeah, you can support us [e-mail] overdue pod and also get access to fun bonuses, including some ones we introduced like a month ago. Monthly newsletter about whatever falls out of our brains. Some of its books, some of. It's not. It's all.

[Craig]

It's not all Little Miss Sunshine yet.

[Andrew]

Very little of it so far has been Little Miss Sunshine. We are like a week out from having to like solidify the. The pitches for the next newsletter. So we'll see. We'll see what we'll see. Also access to our Discord community, early access to Sit Me Baby One More Time and other long reads episodes and just other little experimental odds and ends that we are messing around with. Patreon.com overdue pod Craig, what is happening? What's happening?

[Craig]

Next time, the we'll find out who won the super bowl and the vanishing half by Brit Bennett. And if the Eagles lose, that half will be me. I will be gone.

[Andrew]

I was wondering if we would do it like only one of us would be doing the episode or if we would just post like half an episode. Like, which. Which half are we gonna. How are we gonna split this baby?

[Craig]

Depending on which pod catcher you use, you will only get the left or the right ear. Think about it.

[Andrew]

We gotta do like ARGs more. Yeah, we should have more episodes where you can play them backwards and hear like satanic messages and stuff. We should be doing more with the format than we are.

[Craig]

You're right. I'm not. New Year, new us.

[Andrew]

All right, everybody, we'll be back to you next time with more of this podcast. But until then, everybody please go birds and try to be happy.