February 2015 - Zorro by Isabel Allende

ZORRO by Isabel Allende

Written in Spanish and translated into English, it was a commissioned novel by the authors of the original films about Zorro and owners of the screen rights. The Author was living in California so was ‘on set’ for a good deal of the book.

A thoroughly enjoyable romp. At times it does read a bit like looking at a 'painted-by-numbers' picture as she ticks off attributes of the finished article that she has to provide origins for in a coming of age prequel, but it is after all a comic book character that she is building and so I don't really take issue with this or with her tongue in cheek approach to the narrative. I particularly liked the impossibly difficult initiation into Justicia, the secret door behind the fireplace in his father's house and the parrot that suddenly appeared on the shoulder of the pirate chief as they waved goodbye to him and Juliana. I did occasionally wonder who the narrator was but didn't immediately think of Isobel so zero out of ten for me from Ms Allende. I didn't read ZORRO as a child and until now had only a vague idea that he was some kind of swashbuckling Robin Hood type figure so I had, and still have, no great emotional attachment to the character and no idea whether aficionados will be satisfied with this as a back story, but as an introduction it worked for me.

It was very well written of course, as one expects from Ms. Allende. I was sure that Diego was going to turn to Isabel, (with her wandering eye), so I was wrong there. Not convinced by him acting the fop, I didn't feel he could have kept up being a simpering fool with just a handkerchief as a prop, rather Scarlet Pimpernel. Characterisations were a bit hard to get a handle on, varied according to the circumstances, except for the baddie.

Didn't she write originally that Bernardo stopped speaking for the next few years, yet did he ever actually start speaking normally again?

It dragged a bit in the middle, in Barcelona. Some bits were too descriptive and detailed and we wanted the story to move on. We thought that we learnt a bit about the history of the region and the discussion ranged from California to the Alaska and the Louisiana Purchase. Some of us weren’t enamoured of it, thought it very much a ‘boys’ book, and kept picking it up and reading bits. Somehow Zorro was too young to have accomplished all that he did by the time he was 21. He went from being a silly teenager to a serious hero in a very short time. It wasn’t the sort of book that appealed to many of the group, though there were good aspects. M liked the Indians, R liked the tongue in cheek way of writing, and the fact that the baddy was a true baddy – a comparison with the Sheriff of Nottingham.

If you liked this, you might like:

The three Musketeers,

Count of Monte Christo,

Flashman or

All the Pretty Horses by Conrad McCarthy

There are four films of the story of Zorro, one a silent film, the Classic from 1940 with Tyrone Power, the 1975 version with Alain Delon, and the 1998 one with Antonio Banderas.

Chris writes: Can thoroughly recommend visiting old Spanish missions if you're ever wondering what to do in California. Very peaceful but interesting places to spend time and at the right time of year you see the flower trails that marked the Camino Real that connected them.

We gave it a mark of 6.

TheLouisiana Purchase(1803) was a land deal between the United States and France, in which the U.S. acquired approximately 827,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million dollars.

http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/louisiana-purchase Very interesting because of the interaction between France, Spain and the US.

On March 30, 1867, the United States reached an agreement to purchase Alaska from Russia for a price of $7.2 million. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/alaska-purchase

From Fantastic Fiction:                  (www.fantasticfiction.com)

A swashbuckling adventure story that reveals for the first time how Diego de la Vega became the masked man we all know so well

Born in southern California late in the eighteenth century, he is a child of two worlds. Diego de la Vega's father is an aristocratic Spanish military man turned landowner; his mother, a Shoshone warrior. Diego learns from his maternal grandmother, White Owl, the ways of her tribe while receiving from his father lessons in the art of fencing and in cattle branding. It is here, during Diego's childhood, filled with mischief and adventure, that he witnesses the brutal injustices dealt Native Americans by European settlers and first feels the inner conflict of his heritage.

At the age of sixteen, Diego is sent to Barcelona for a European education. In a country chafing under the corruption of Napoleonic rule, Diego follows the example of his celebrated fencing master and joins La Justicia, a secret underground resistance movement devoted to helping the powerless and the poor. With this tumultuous period as a backdrop, Diego falls in love, saves the persecuted, and confronts for the first time a great rival who emerges from the world of privilege.

Between California and Barcelona, the New World and the Old, the persona of Zorro is formed, a great hero is born, and the legend begins. After many adventures -- duels at dawn, fierce battles with pirates at sea, and impossible rescues -- Diego de la Vega, a.k.a. Zorro, returns to America to reclaim the hacienda on which he was raised and to seek justice for all who cannot fight for it themselves.