THE INFINITE PLAN by ISABEL ALLENDE (1991)

Second reading


I believe I will send this book on to Half-Price Books. When I took it down from my bookshelf I couldn't remember anything about it, and as I read it I still couldn't recall ever having read it before. Before you (or I) chalk this forgetfulness up to old age, consider that I well remember The House of the Spirits, also written by Allende. That novel was written in the Latin American tradition of magic realism, a style I much appreciate. The Infinite Plan has no trace of that, being entirely realistic.....and forgettable.

The primary shortcoming of the novel is that it tells, tells, tells, rather than showing and letting the reader come to conclusions for himself. We are never dropped inside the story or the characters' lives. It's like when somebody tells you, in excruciating detail, the plot of a movie, which becomes entirely unimpressive when summarized in that way, even though the movie itself may have been wonderful. If I had been the publisher to whom this manuscript was submitted, I would have turned it down.

The plot chronicles five decades in the life of Greg Reeves, from his youth as he traveled the country with his father, who preached of the "infinite plan" for each man's life, until his middle age, when he concludes "...there is no infinite plan, just the strife of living." Along the way he makes so many self-destructive choices that he becomes a totally unsympathetic character. By the end, I did not care one whit whether he ever found himself or not.

I do not recommend this book at all. It is not well done enough to be literary fiction and not cheerful or suspenseful enough to be popular fiction.