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The Vision Of Elena Silves
The Vision Of Elena Silves
Sep 13, 2025 6:18 PM

Author:Nicholas Shakespeare

The Vision Of Elena Silves

In the Amazon city of Belén, in the heart of the Peruvian jungle, three old men sit on a bench. They sit in the square every day under the hot sun, remembering the women they loved and the world when it was a better place. One day a woman hurries past their bench whom all have reason to remember - Elena Silves, the girl with eyes as blue as the sky who once saw a vision and has been incarcerated by the Church authorities in a convent high in the Andes ever since. But the old men remember something else. They remember that Elena had been in love at the time with Gabriel, a student revolutionary who became the most wanted man in Belén.

Reviews

GHOST HAWK is the work of a writer with great imaginative power and long-practised narrative skill. I was swept up in the story, shocked, moved, and enthralled - and completely convinced by the historical background. I haven't read anything better for a long time.

—— Philip Pullman

Moving and long lasting, this is rich storytelling, and is probably Susan Cooper's finest work so far

—— Marcus Sedgwick , Guardian

evocative and moving

—— Garth Nix

This book is nothing short of a masterpiece.

—— The Bookbag

Moving and thought-provoking novel

—— Maximum Shelf

Deeply moving and thought-provoking, this is by no means a comforting read: Cooper takes bold risks with both her characters and her narrative, and a sense of the unquiet ghosts of the past haunts this book's pages. A superb book, which deserves to become a future classic.

—— The Booktrust

A breakout book

—— Allison Pearson

If you enjoy the introspective aspects of Virginia Woolf or the American modernity of Jennifer Egan, you’ll love this sweeping, tragicomic novel of ideas

—— Psychologies

One of those generation-defining America novels that tackles big historical issues

—— Marie Claire

Full of wit

—— Emerald Street

The wit, intelligence and deep feeling of Wolitzer’s writing are extraordinary and The Interestings brings her achievement, already so steadfast and remarkable, to an even higher level

—— Jeffrey Eugenides

Meg Wolitzer’s latest offering promises to be the epic novel of the summer

—— Stella, Sunday Telegraph

A wonderful novel, written with warmth and depth of emotion

—— Kate Mosse , The Times

This is an exhilarating, aerobatic, addictive novel

—— Claire Lowdon , Sunday Times

Meg Wolitzer’s best novel yet

—— William Leith , Evening Standard

The dreamy, criss-crossing narrative proves Wolitzer one of America’s most ingenious and important writers

—— Sunday Telegraph

An engrossing look at life’s twists and turns

—— Woman's Weekly

The wit, intelligence and deep feeling of Wolitzer’s writing are extraordinary and The Interestings brings her achievement, already so steadfast and remarkable, to an even higher level.

—— JEFFREY EUGENIDES

This is a wonderful book. Intelligent and subtle, it is exquisitely written with enormous warmth and depth of emotion… Wolitzer is an affectionate and clear-sighted observer of human nature

—— Kate Mosse , The Times

Meg Wolitzer proves brilliant at writing normal, unremarkable lives, investing them with just as much detailed attention and humane humour as the lives of the beautiful, the rich and the famous… [She] also pulls off an impressive balancing act, sometimes inhabiting the moment-to-moment present of her characters, and at others times writing with a droll hindsight

—— Holly Williams , Independent on Sunday

There are certain authors whose new book you look forward to as though you were about to catch up on news from an old friend. And there are authors whose new book you fall on greedily because you know it will be tartly delicious and satisfy a hunger you didn’t know you had till you read them for the first time. For me, Meg Wolitzer has long been in both of those categories… The Interestings is full of Wolitzer’s trademark pleasures. I love her fearlessness in tackling everything … She has a sly wit and verbal brio which can even make clinical depression entertaining

—— Allison Pearson , Daily Telegraph
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