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'Violeta' exhibits Isabel Allende's talent for storytelling, integrating fiction and history, and personalizing a time and place through character development. Whereas 'A Long Petal of the Sea' tightly wove together the two human catastrophes of Fascist Spain and the Coup in Chile, tied together by a select number of characters, 'Violeta' comes across as maybe a bit more disjointed. The reader is introduced to one character after another as told by centenarian Violeta to her grandson. I could detect no underlying theme except for the long and interesting life of Violeta herself. Someone who lived so long, and lived a life of unflagging awareness, enlightenment and learning, as well as hard work, is bound to have experienced countless life "chapters." Allende, finally, uses Violeta's voice to chronicle social, legal and political changes and imperatives which have occurred over the past century, in Chile and across the world. As Violeta says more than once, "there is so much more to be done." The reader would have wanted to get to know Violeta as a person, and indeed to have listened to her tales. She was a many-sided spirit who did her best to take control of circumstances and events, and by and large, succeeded.