Review of The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende

*The Wind Knows My Name* by Isabel Allende (2023). Published by Ballantine Books.

Usually, when there’s a certain book I want to read out there in the world, I find out about it through the Internet. I’m not big on doom scrolling through Instagram for books anymore, so I have a tendency to have a few blogs and outlets here and there that I read for book reviews and suggestions.

That was where I found out about The Wind Knows My Name. It appeared on several of my different book blogs, so I decided to go and check the book out pretty quickly after its release. I was even on the waiting list, which grew to over two hundred people by the time I got my hands on the book.

But here’s the irony: I didn’t read the book when it reached my name on the list. I checked it out, held onto it for three weeks, and then was forced to return it lest the library starts angrily calling my cell phone demanding that I return the book.

I ended up with it again through a Libby audiobook, and I got through the book finally through my drives back and forth to school. I will say upfront though, this was a difficult book for me to get through even with listening.

Here’s my review!

Told across many generations, this is a book about sacrifice and loss.

Now, this is a novel that takes place across several different time periods, as I mentioned above. There are also multiple different protagonists and stories that are subtly woven together, so if you’re not paying attention or reading too quickly, you’re going to find yourself confused about this book and its messaging.

It begins in 1938 though, in Austria. The character of Samuel is only a child, around six-years-old at that point, and lives with a Jewish family. If you know your European history, especially when it comes to Jews in Austria, you can kind of see where this is going.

During the Night of Broken Glass Samuel’s father goes missing, and that sets into motion the events that are going to change his life together. While this is a brief summary of the events going on, I find that the book does an excellent job flowing through the tragedy that’s about to unfold.

Samuel’s mother somehow manages to secure a spot for him on one of the last trains out of the country. There’s a catch though: Samuel has to leave her and everything behind except for his clothes and beloved violin. She puts him on the train to the United Kingdom, and he is destined to never see his family again.

We then fast forward almost one hundred years later, in 2019. We learn about Anita, who is seven, and has been separated from her mother. She is blind, and they boarded trains to get out of El Salvador before more conflict ruins their lives even more than it has already.

Separated from her mother at the border, because of a new policy that separates families of refugees, Anita is alone without anyone to advocate for her. She is sent to a camp, but then she finds ways to mentally escape as she’s assigned to a new social worker.

The social worker,, Selena, enlists the help of a lawyer to try and find someone to help Anita and her situation. Through their investigations, they learn that Anita has a single relative in the United States, who works as a helper for the now elderly Samuel.

With these four characters we’ve learned about, we see how their world collide and interact, especially with how their experiences overlap in different ways. Throughout the novel, we get to focus on one of the four characters, truly getting to learn from them in their perspective.

Overall Thoughts

This novel had some much promise to me from the synopsis, but the focusing on four different characters made it seem less focused in general. I get what the author was trying to do, but I think this format doesn’t help much.

For example, I thought it covered way too much ground and I began getting sucked out of the narrative mentally. I wanted to stay with Samuel after the first part, and maybe if we had just focused on Anita and her story, I would’ve been more happy with the novel.

Overall, I can see how someone else might love this, but it wasn’t for me. It felt a little too messy, and I think I came into it with different expectations.

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