Translated from Spanish by Gregory Rabassa
Published by Phoenix, 1999, 245 pages. Original version published in 1992.

“[L]isten carefully, because I hold its whole history in the secret places of my memory.”

Doña Inés, the matriarch of a wealthy Venezuelan family who owns a cacao plantation, fights a legal battle with her houseboy for some property in the jungle. This is her story, and the story of her country.

The novel begins in the 1700s. Doña Inés, the narrator of this book, is a fierce, determined woman who grows up in a large house, surrounded by slaves. She is married to Alejandro Martínez de Villegas y Blanco, an important man in his community. Alejandro bequeaths a plot of land to Juan del Rosario, his son by one of the slave women. After Alejandro’s death, Doña Inés refuses to acknowledge that the land is Juan’s, so Juan takes her to court.

And so the battle begins, a battle that would continue long after the lifetimes of both Doña Inés and Juan del Rosario. Because even after she dies, Doña Inés’s ghost inhabits her house, hunting for the title deeds that will prove her ownership of the land. Over the next two centuries—the book begins in 1715 and ends in 1985—she is witness not only to the changes in her family’s fortunes but also to the seismic changes taking place in Venezuela.

When the book starts, Venezuela is still a Spanish colony. Through Doña Inés, we follow its history through independence, the 1812 earthquake that devastates Caracas, the rebellion that brings down the government, the coming of Simón Bolivar, the abolition of slavery, and the modernization of the country.

The fortunes of the Villegas family ebb and flow, but never return to the glory days of Doña Inés. They often struggle to survive, and Doña Inés worries that her line will die out. She watches over her descendants, frustrated that she cannot communicate with them.

During the rebellion, Doña Isabel (Doña Inés’s great-granddaughter)—the only Villegas left alive—flees the house with her baby daughter Isabel and her slave Daria. When Daria realizes that Doña Isabel will not survive the journey, she leaves with the baby and finds her way to her own family, where she raises the child. Twelve years later, she takes Isabel to the priest who had baptised her and requests him to return Isabel to her true family.

Doña Inés frets as the priest tries to ensure that Daria is telling the truth—she knows Daria is not lying, but has to wait until the priest realizes that “her tale was as clean as a January sky and as clear and cool as a river coming down off the mountain…I’ve kept the document, the proof that our lineage hasn’t been snapped off…that a girl of twelve…[is] the thread of continuity and survives us.”

Doña Inés is a character so vivid that she leaps off the page: angry, opinionated, haranguing, furious at many of the changes happening around her. But as the decades go by, her fury abates, and you can see her mellowing and changing with the times.

Doña Inés keeps up a conversation with the two most important men in her life: Alejandro and Juan del Rosario, the slave boy whom she freed (something she never lets him forget). She talks to Alejandro’s ghost, telling him what is going on, although he seems to be sleeping through most of it and often misses the point, exasperating Doña Inés. “What’s cacao selling for? Idiot, I’m trying to explain that the country is falling into anarchy, and you wake up asking nonsense like that.”

This is a wide-ranging book, covering not only a large swathe of time, but also social and economic changes, and shifting race and class relations. It is interesting that Doña Inés’s character arc continues even after her death, so the ghost at the end of the book has come a long way from the woman at the start of it.

Ana Teresa Torres writes with a great deal of humour (much of it wicked, in keeping with Doña Inés’s narration). The book is full of interesting characters: Domingo Sanchez, the village boy who makes good by manipulating his way to the top; Daria, the slave who rescues Isabel; and Belén, one of the last descendants of the Villegas family whom we meet before the book ends. And of course, Doña Inés herself, someone who is not easy to forget.

I enjoyed this book and learned a lot about Venezuelan history and society. Torres packs a lot into this seemingly slim volume. This is history told from the point of view of the people caught up in the events—which is the best way to bring it all alive.