I chose to read the book for a research paper in school and I was disappointed. I found it shallow and lacking in direction. There was not an specific time setting for her story and the social problems that affects our society are approached in a very generic fashion, like painting by the numbers. Isabel Allende finds the worse in our society and drags it down by attributing enormous racial and social barriers in our society, which they do exist but I believe they are overstated in her story. This book is more about stereotyping, racism, sexual abuse and a general decline of our society than about The Infinite Plan, which she just mentions here and there throughout the book to justify the title.