Later she tells us how the overthrow of her uncle Salvador Allende's government lead the family to seek asylum in Venezuela. Allende inherited Clara's propensity to communicate with spirits and shared a special relationship with Paula as she lingered between death and life. We learn about Allende's grandparents, the real life inspiration for Esteban and Clara Trueba in House of the Spirits. It was in this regard that Allende rediscovered her writing voice despite the tragedies befalling her family.Īllende alternated telling her family's story with the present situation of Paula's illness. Isabel decided to tell Paula the story of their family history, even if she would never experience these memories for herself again. Isabel could not write, her sole focus being that Paula should get well, and her agent urged her to write Paula a letter. Her mother and husband rarely left her side for the next six months as doctors repeatedly tested her to see if they could find a break through. At age twenty eight after only being married for one year, she experienced complications from the disease and slipped into a coma in a Madrid hospital. Paula unfortunately inherited a disorder called porphyria from her father. At the time of this publication while she was grappling with Paula's illness, Allende was unsure if she would ever write fiction again, although, when she resumed, Santiago possessed a magnetic pull and would play a role in most subsequent work. It is this city that Allende refers to as home and is the setting of her first three novels and short story collection. Following the birth of her two brothers, her father Tomas abandoned the family, and Allende's mother retreated with her three young children to Santiago, Chile, the city they had inhabited since the time of the conquistadors. Allende was born in Peru in 1942 as her parents were serving as diplomats in Lima. If I felt the connection after this memoir, I felt like a close friend of hers following Paula. She has a way of relating herself that one feels like they are sharing a cup of coffee with her and reminiscing. What awaited me was a heart rending account of Allende's in which she details her life up until she started her long goodbye to her daughter.Īfter I read The Sum of Our Days, I was left feeling as though I knew Allende well enough to be a friend or relative. Needing a book from the 1990s for my women's 20th century challenge, I decided to grapple with Paula.

Until now, however, I had been avoiding her first memoir Paula, which details the year and a half of her life where she dealt with her daughter's long illness that eventually lead to her death. Since then, I have reread her opus three times, as well as a number of her novels and memoir The Sum of Our Days. Isabel Allende has long been my favorite author since I read her House of the Spirits for the first time nearly twenty years ago.

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