The De Valle family in turn-of-the-century Chile has 2 daughters, Rosa the beautiful and Clara the Clairvoyant. Rosa is betrothed to a man named Esteban Trueba, who is from a grand family, but fallen on hard times. Rosa dies of accidental poisoning, and the heartbroken Esteban marries Clara instead. He works hard restoring his family’s old hacienda back to its full glory, driving the local peasants hard and becoming fabulously rich along the way. Clara has 3 children, a girl Blanca and twin boys. Esteban also rapes several of the local peasant women, and has numerous illegitimate children with them.
Blanca falls in love with Pedro Tercero, the son of the estate foreman, much to the chagrin of her father. Additionally. Pedro Tercero is a socialist, and the murderous Esteban resolves to kill Pedro himself. He succeeds in cutting some of his fingers off, but does marry Blanca off to a dubious French count. Blanca has a daughter with Pedro Tercero, Alba, who is the apple of her grandfather’s eye. In college, she is involved in a revolutionary movement during the Pinochet regime, and is arrested and raped by Colonel Esteban Garcia, Trueba’s illegitimate son, thus completing a cycle.
This broadly summarizes about half the story, or what can best be perceived as the main story. The narrative meanders into several side stories involving the twins, the French count’s activities, an uncle who travels, Clara’s magical abilities, Chilean politics and the nationalists vs. socialists, the military coup and much more.
Much of the novel focuses on magic realism, and the multi-generational family saga seems forced. Often it seems like X is born, and is a child playing, then goes away to school and at next reckoning, is an adult, and contributing to the storyline and producing the next generation. One particularly frustrating example is Transito Soto, a brothel madam who only ever appears when there is a key plot development required.
Only Esteban has significant character development, and there is moderate character development for Clara and the twins. The rest of the characters are mostly just mentioned.
On the whole, the writing is very engaging, but the plot is exceedingly frustrating.