Portrait in Sepia (In Spanish: Retrato en sepia) is a 2000 novel by Chilean author Isabel Allende. It is also a sequel to her 1998 Daughter of Fortune. Daughter tells the story of teenager Eliza Sommers traveling from Chile to California smack in the middle of the California Gold Rush of 1848-1855 to search for her soulmate. In contrast, Portrait starts out by continuing the tale of Eliza and Chinese healer Tao Chi'en, but shortly thereafter switches focus to their granddaughter, Aurora "Lai-Ming" Del Valle.
Tropes present in this novel:
- An Arm and a Leg: Severo del Valle returns to Chile and goes to war. He gets a leg wound that requires him to get his leg amputated without any kind of anesthetic. The post-op conditions are even worse due to the overcrowding and filth.
- Bad Mood Retreat: Susana, Eduardo Dominguez's wife, is prone to depressions and headaches. She often retreats to her bedroom (which she does not share with her husband) and instructs everybody not to bother her.
- Best Friends-in-Law: Aurora, despite the issues in her marriage to Diego, adores her in-laws. Doña Elvira acts like a mother to her and nurses her back to health when she falls ill with pneumonia. Adela, Diego's sister, shares the mystery novels she reads on the sly and they amuse themselves by making up their own plots. Eduardo tries to make up for his brother's aloofness.
- British Stuffiness: Frederick Williams possesses this quality, giving the impression of being from English nobility (he does not bother to correct whoever thinks that) and making people wonder what the heck did he see in overbearing Paulina del Valle other than possibly her money. He does warm up to Paulina and Aurora.
- Calming Tea: In Aurora's own words, how she deals with awkward moments: "In our family we serve tea when a situation is slightly uncomfortable, and since I feel self-conscious almost all the time, I serve a lot of it. That beverage has the virtue of helping me steady my nerves."
- The Dandy: Matías, Paulina's son, cares more about his clothes being perfect that almost anything else and has no interest in business. He ends up seducing Lynn Sommers and getting her pregnant and then denies being the father. Later he dies of advanced syphilis.
- Death by Childbirth: Lynn Sommers dies after giving birth to Aurora.
- Death Seeker: Severo del Valle is so devastated by Lynn's death that when he goes off to fight at Chile's war against Peru and Bolivia, he actively hopes to die. Ironically, after being wounded and having a leg amputated he sets his mind to survive.
- Hidden Depths: Frederick Williams, the perfect English butler and later consort to Grande Dame Paulina del Valle became a butler after being Sentenced Down Under for stealing and later on learning the trade.
- High-Class Call Girl: In her prime, Amanda Lowell is a beautiful Scottish actress in San Francisco. Money is not enough for her services; charm and good manners are also necessary. She literally collects notches in her bedpost, one for every lover. Feliciano has a dalliance with her. Paulina finds out and is furious about him embarrassing her like that.
- Historical Domain Character:
- I Cannot Self-Terminate: Tao Chi'en survives the attack by the assassins sent by The Triads and the Tongs, but he is left paralyzed and barely able to speak. He asks Eliza to withhold food and water and she cannot bring herself to do that, so she follows his instructions and mercy kills him.
- The Jeeves: Williams, Paulina's butler. He is the perfect English butler and incredibly loyal to his employee: rescuing her son Matías from opium dens when necessary, and doing everything in his power to help Paulina up until the point she decides to move back to Chile. When she lets him know that she won't need the services of the perfect butler over there, he proposes going with her as her husband. She actually likes the idea.
- Let Them Die Happy: Diego begs Aurora to avoid making a scandal about his adulterous relationship with his brother's wife, as it would kill his mother, Doña Elvira. Since Aurora grows to love her mother-in-law as if the woman were her own mother, she consents.
- Love Martyr: Looking back at her marriage with Diego, Aurora has trouble believing how much she humbled herself to make him fall in love with her. It was a doomed mission anyway; he is in love with his sister-in-law.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Aurora grows up being given the runaround whenever she asks about her father. She knows Severo registered himself as her father in her birth certificate. It is not until Matías Rodriguez de la Cruz goes to Chile to spend his dying days with his family that she learns he is her father.
- Marriage of Convenience: Williams, Paulina del Valle's butler, proposes that they marry so that he can go along with her to her home country. He explains clearly that he does not intend to be a spouse in the romantic aspects and even counsels her to take the necessary precautions to keep her wealth in her name. It works; by virtue of being a man he has access to areas that are off-limits to Paulina, and being her husband improves his status. Plus, Paulina loves the idea of scandalizing whoever learns she is married to her butler.
- Not So Stoic: The only moment Williams lets his emotions show is when he loses his composure and is driven to tears at the sight of Paulina del Valle looking helpless and vulnerable after her surgery.
- Patient Childhood Love Interest: Nivea bids Severo goodbye as he sails to San Francisco to go to his aunt's. During his time in San Francisco, they maintain correspondence, and spend more time discussing issues of social justice than their relationship. She even waits for him to return from fighting in the war and ends up proposing marriage to him.
- Plagued by Nightmares: Aurora has a recurring nightmare: she is walking through an unfamiliar street with somebody whose face she can’t make out holding her hand. Then they are ambushed by a band of children in black pajamas and she tries to reach for her companion's hand.
- Poirot Speak: When Matias returns so he can die with his family, he has spent so much time overseas that he speaks Spanish with an odd French-English accent, and is constantly dropping phrases in French in his conversations with Aurora ("You are very young to understand these things, ma chère.") This trope is not evident in the Spanish edition, but it is in the English translation.
- Raised by Grandparents: Aurora is raised for the first few years of her life by her maternal grandparents. Afterwards, Grande Dame Paulina del Valle, her paternal grandmother, takes over parenting duties.
- Roll in the Hay: Where Aurora finds her husband Diego and Susana, his sister's wife. When they talk later, he says he did not want to hurt Aurora, but he is crazy in love with Susana.
- Second Love: Physician Iván Radovic becomes this to Aurora after she separates from Diego (divorce was not legal in Chile at the time) and at a point where she had become convinced she would never love again.
- Sexless Marriage:
- Aurora's marriage to Diego Dominguez becomes this, confirmed when he furnishes their bedroom with twin beds. She can't figure out why until she catches him and his brother's wife having a Roll in the Hay.
- Paulina del Valle's marriage to Feliciano becomes this because she has gained so much weight and she cannot imagine any male would find her desirable. She is unaware that Feliciano does not care.
- So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Lynn's beauty attracts so many suitors to whom she is oblivious. It makes her the target of Matías, who seduces her as part of a bet and dumps her when he is done. When she turns out to be pregnant, he abandons her.
- Their First Time: Aurora and Diego's wedding night is a big disappointment to her. Justified in that Aurora has not received proper instruction about sex, including that sex can be enjoyable for a woman, and Diego is madly in love with his brother's wife.
- Theme Naming: Lynne delivers her baby at dawn and names her Aurora, Spanish for "dawn". Tao Chi'en gives her the Chinese name Lai-Mingnote .
- The Triads and the Tongs: Tao Chi'en has been doing his best to rescue girls from sexual slavery in Chinatown, and it is politely tolerated. But when he gets involved with a pair of American missionaries who disrupt the people in charge of the business, the tongs are outraged he involved outsiders and send out a hit on him. Assassins ambush him while he is out on the street with his granddaughter, leaving him for dead.
- Widow Mistreatment: Fearing this, Paulina del Valle begs her dying husband to live, promising even to stop locking him out of her bedroom. This makes him die with a smile on his lips. Her fears come true: she finds herself excluded from social and business circles, and opts to leave San Francisco and go back to Chile.
