There are subgenres known not only for their tropes, but for their style too. When ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ became the most famous novel of magical realism, certain expectations appeared as well. A magical realism novel was to have a rich, clear style that still gave the reader a space to judge the characters on their own. The style was as important as the unexplained, miraculous events happening in ordinary life. One could observe this especially in Isabel Allende’s ‘The House of the Spirits’, and soon other novels referring to this kind of style and themes followed. ‘The Inheritance of Orquidea Divina’ is a good example of this trend, but is it a good example of a magical realism novel? Though I really wished it were otherwise, I am afraid it’s a mediocre example.
Yes, I hoped for something more, for a family saga about three generations, the way ‘The House of the Spirits’ was. I also hoped that the supernatural would be as subtle and natural in the novel’s universe as it was in Allende’s novel (and in Marquez’s books too). But this is more like a story by Kate Morton or Lucinda Riley in the Latin American version: You have a family secret and two timelines which enable the readers to uncover the mystery. It isn’t bad, believe me, but it isn’t something I’ve expected either.
So, the story is that Orqudea Divina, a matriarch of the family, dies, and her grandchildren have to find out her secrets, and how they are connected to their lives. Orquidea has had many husbands and many children, but, in the end, the two of her grandchildren, Rey and Marimar, are the most important and best described characters in the ‘present’ timeline. Another thing is the story of Orquidea’s youth in Ecuador (and not only there). An illegitimate daughter of a Black sailor and a white woman of good family, she escaped from her mother and wealthy stepfather because she’d been neglected compared to the legitimate younger children. Orquidea joins a circus and marries the circus master, soon to be the main villain, and he is called, I’m not kidding you, Pedro Bolívar Londoño. Let me explain… This may be a cultural thing, so I don’t get certain things right. Is this some kind of symbolism that Orquidea refers to Pedro by his surname, Bolívar? Like, most people call their spouses by their names, don’t they? Unless we are in Jane Austen’s or ‘Gone with the Wind’ ‘s era. Is this some social commentary, some criticism of Latin American founding myths…? I wish I could buy it, but… I’m from Poland, and if we give characters famous names associated with our country or culture, we do it for fun. If someone named their villain Copernicus/Kopernik or Kościuszko, let’s say, to us, it wouldn’t sound ominous or symbolic. It would sound f*cking laughable.
The sad thing is that the villainous personality of Pedro Bolívar Londoño is also quite laughable. On the one hand, I’m very glad that this is the Arthur Huntingdon type of villain, unfaithful and capricious, no matter his fine looks and charming personality. We should show and remind people that lying and cheating are simply bad. So far, it could be a convincing story. But the more details supernatural threads there are, the more cartoonish it gets. I’m not going to give you spoilers, but, in the end, the first husband of Orquidea comes out to be a Disney villain, not a villain written for adults.
Another thing is that what I miss from the original magical realism novels is the complexity of the characters. There are no one-dimensional villains in ‘The House of the Spirits’. Even Esteban Trueba, that ultra-conservative exploiter and abuser, is written as a complex human being. In ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, Fernanda del Carpio is mean, but she isn’t this supernatural Disney villain laughing ominously. Sadly, ‘The Inheritance of Orquidea Divina’ lacks this depth.
Its tropes aren’t original, either, and you can literally check from which famous novel they are taken. A rude father telling his illegitimate child that they shouldn’t see each other? We’ve seen that in ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’. Miraculously growing crops? Been there, seen that on Petra Cotes’ grounds in ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’. They say that Allende has plagiarized Márquez. Having read ‘The Inheritance of Orquidea Divina’, I’m sure that ‘The House of the Spirits’ is all but plagiarism. Allende is perfect at evoking Márquez’s style, but she never introduces a trop because #marquezdidit. Her story, filled with ghosts, premonitions, and green-haired women, is original. It’s her own. Here, you can make a list and check. This is from Márquez. That is from Lovecraft.
But there could be things which are, like, updated compared to the old magical realism novel? There are many people of colour in this book. Orquidea is a mixed-race Black Latina. Her third husband was Chinese. Her last husband was Afro-American. But we don’t learn much about them, just as we don’t learn a lot about Afro-Colombian or Afro-Ecuadorian culture. The Indigenous culture isn’t explored deeply either, the way it was, let’s say, in ‘Gods of Jade and Shadow’. There are tropes including racism and anti-blackness, and I’m glad they are there. But, eventually, the Afrolatine inheritance of Orquidea is not culture or memory, but an absent father and a racist new family.
The last disappointment is that in ‘The Inheritance of Orquidea Divina’, even the style part is this classical magical realism only if we follow Orquidea’s story. Her grandchildren get their threads described in a different way. And it isn’t bad. But it isn’t, above all, what I hoped for. Zoraida Córdova is a good fantasist. But I’m afraid she won’t be another Silvia Moreno-García, just as she won’t be a new Isabel Allende or Alice Hoffman.
Left Hand of Fiction 