WHEN well-established writers want to test themselves by doing something a little more ambitious, historical fiction seems to be the first place they turn. It worked for Colm Toibin with The Master but whether it will work for Isabel Allende with this her 12th book is not so certain.

Ines of my Soul tells the story of Ines Suarez, a real historical figure (Dona Ines Suarez, 1507. . .1580) who took part in the founding of Chile. The story is told in the first person by Ines, now an old woman looking back on her eventful life.

Having spent her childhood in Spain, brought up in the knowledge that she would never marry because her family were too poor to afford a dowry for her, she faced a life of tatting. Then she met Juan and rumours spread that she was doing dark things in dark corners, which left her family no choice but to allow her to marry before she disgraced them.

When Juan disappears to the New World, Ines follows him but ends up embarking on a passionate affair with the conqueror Don Pedro de Valdivia.

It can be risky to take a real person from history and dress them up in your own thoughts and feelings. It is clear that Allende greatly admires her protagonist, who is painted as a passionate and heroic figure and on this level this is not only a historical work but a feminist tribute to a woman who, as Allende writes in her author's note, has been "nearly ignored by historians for more than 400 years".

The first 100 pages of Ines of my Soul are quite dense, packed with historical detail setting the background.

Allende has been respectful to history, perhaps a little too much so because the book has a restrained, conservative tone that often does not match with the passion exhibited by its protagonist.

The subject matter of war, cannibalism, love, lust and greed is naturally enthralling, but the detailed passages on gruesome conquests and bloody war tend to drag on and read more like passages from a history book than as part of a fluid story. There is a sense of compromise here, of Allende deferring to history above all.

There is no questioning Allende's talent.

She is an impressive writer and a wonderful storyteller with an unusual ability to absorb the reader. But when her style is constrained by the necessary historical minutiae of ancient wars and civilizations, the story feels a little fettered, its flow not as strident as it should be.

Still, when Allende gets into her stride, there is no bettering her and the reader can bask in the feeling of being told a good, oldfashioned story by a master storyteller. If Allende was less reverent to history, and more loyal to her storytelling, this would have been a better book.