Product Description

With an enchanting blend of magical realism, politics, and romance reminiscent of her classic bestseller The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende presents a soul-baring memoir that seizes the reader like a novel of suspense.

Written for her daughter Paula when she became ill and slipped into a coma, Paula is the colorful story of Allende's life--from her early years in her native Chile, through the turbulent military coup of 1973, to the subsequent dictatorship and her family's years of exile. In the telling, bizarre ancestors reveal themselves, delightful and bitter childhood memories surface, enthralling anecdotes of youthful years are narrated and intimate secrets are softly whispered.

In an exorcism of death and a celebration of life, Isabel Allende explores the past, questions the gods, and creates a magical book that carries the reader from tears to laughter, from terror to sensuality to wisdom. In Paula, readers will come to understand that the miraculous world of her novels is the world Isabel Allende inhabits--it is her enchanted reality.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #172034 in Books
• Published on: 1996-04-24
• Released on: 1996-03-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Amazon.com Review
"Listen, Paula. I am going to tell you a story so that when you wake up you will not feel so lost." So says Chilean writer Isabel Allende (The House of the Spirits) in the opening lines of the luminous, heart-rending memoir she wrote while her 28-year-old daughter Paula lay in a coma. In its pages, she ushers an assortment of outrageous relatives into the light: her stepfather, an amiable liar and tireless debater; grandmother Meme, blessed with second sight; and delinquent uncles who exultantly torment Allende and her brothers. Irony and marvelous flights of fantasy mix with the icy reality of Paula's deathly illness as Allende sketches childhood scenes in Chile and Lebanon; her uncle Salvatore Allende's reign and ruin as Chilean president; her struggles to shake off or find love; and her metamorphosis into a writer.

From Publishers Weekly
Allende is a mesmerizing novelist (The House of the Spirits; The Stories of Eva Luna) who here takes on a double challenge. Writing nonfiction for the first time, she interweaves the story of her own life with the slow dying of her 28-year-old daughter, Paula. A magician with words, Allende makes this grim scenario into a wondrous encounter with the innermost sorrows and joys of another human being. In 1991, while living in Madrid with her husband, Paula was felled by porphyria, a rare blood disease, and, despite endless care by her mother and husband, lapsed into an irreversible coma. Her mother, as she watched by Paula's bedside, began to write this book, driven by a desperation to communicate with her unconscious daughter. She writes of her own Chilean childhood, the violent death of her uncle, Salvador Allende, and the family's flight to Venezuela from the oppressive Pinochet regime. Allende explores her relationship with her own mother, documented in the hundreds of letters they exchanged since she left home. Allende later married-and divorced-an undemanding and loyal man and became a fierce feminist, rebelling against the constraints of traditional Latin American society. Eventually, hope waning, Allende and her son-in-law take the comatose Paula to California, where the author lives with her second husband. The climactic scenes of Paula's death in the rambling old house by the Pacific Ocean seem to take place in another time and space. Only a writer of Allende's passion and skill could share her tragedy with her readers and leave them exhilarated and grateful. QPB selection.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In December 1991, the 28-year-old daughter of noted novelist Allende fell desperately ill and then slid into a coma, struck down by the inherited disease porphyria. As she nursed Paula daily in a hospital in Madrid, Allende kept a journal in which she told her daughter her life story: "I have the whole future ahead of me. I want to give it to you, Paula, because you have lost yours." The result is a deeply affecting tale, written in the rich, luminous prose typical of Allende's novels, that investigates the sources of her writing as it paints a vivid portrait of Chile moving from postcolonial propriety to Socialist experiment to Pinochet's oppression. In Part 2, written after Paula was brought back to California, the tone changes as Allende realizes that her daughter will never revive. In the remainder of the book Allende speaks not to Paula but about Paula, relating the effort it took to let her die peacefully. Pointing out that until the 20th century?and even now in all but the most industrially advanced countries?losing a child was a common experience, she gives some insight into what it takes to bear that loss. Highly recommended.
-?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A passionate and startling memoir, written with love
Isabel Allende has made her name as a writer in the genre of magic realism, where fantastical events occur, often without warning. When her daughter Paula collapsed into an irreversibly coma due to a rare disease, Allende found herself desperate for a story to tell her dying daughter. This is the book that arose out of a mother's need to understand the past, the future, and the mysterious connection between the two. Allende tells of events before her birth, of Chilean politics and how it affected her famously political family, of falling in love, of becoming a writer, of motherhood, of her journey through Paula's illness - while embracing the spirituality that pervades her fiction. Surprisingly, the story of Allende's life bears remarkable resemblance, both in fact and in imagery, to her bestselling novel THE HOUSE OF SPIRITS.

While sadness frames this memoir, the core of it pulses with life and faith. Beautifully written, with moments that will make you pause with admiration, this book is startling and powerful. Every fan of Allende should read this, both for the context it provides for her writing and for the force of her storytelling.

Life-Affirmation
I first read Isabel Allende when my friend's mother recommended "The House of the Spirits." Later, I told my friend's mother how much I had enjoyed the novel. On that occasion she handed me her copy of "Paula," saying, "Hear. Read this." I obliged. "Paula" is the author's autobiography, written for her daughter, as she tries to nurse her daughter through a rare illness that has left her comatose. Allende visits the events in her past as she copes with the present. "Paula" moved me on many different levels. Allende's story of her own past is captivating. Her present day struggle to heal her daughter is heartwrenching. Despite the sadnesses of the book, it is a book that affirms life. I read it whenever I feel have wallowed in self-pity for too long. It reminds me that it is I who am in charge of my destiny. After crying the many tears I cry when I read "Paula," I feel cleansed, rejuvenated, and ready to live life again.

Heartwrenching and magical
This book will make you cry and laugh and everything in between. The first half of the book is a letter to her daughter written in the hope that she will wake from her coma. In fear that Paula will not remember her past Isabel Allende tells her the true story of their family. The second half is a farewell to Paula. It is a story of love and loss in many aspects. Love and loss of family, of country, and of life. It is gripping to read of people who have had to live in exile and find their way without the safety of being able to go "home." It is even more beautiful to find that their home is found wherever they are. This book should be read by mothers, daughters, immigrants, and anyone decending from people who have lived through persecution, exile, or political turmoil.