Paula - Softcover

Allende, Isabel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006548563 ISBN 13: 9780006548560

Publisher: Flamingo, 1996

Synopsis

In December 1991, Allende's daughter Paula, aged 28 fell gravely ill and sank into a coma. This book started as a letter to Paula written during the hours spent at her bedside, and became a personal memoir and a testament to the ties that bind families - a brave, enlightening, inspiring true story. This book was written during the interminable hours the novelist Isabel Allende spent in the corridors of a Madrid hospital, in her hotel room and beside her daughter Paula's bed during the summer and autumn of 1992. Faced with the loss of her child, Isabel Allende turned to storytelling, to sustain her own spirit and to convey to her daughter the will to wake up, to survive. The story she tells is that of her own life, her family history and the tragedy of her nation, Chile, in the years leading up to Pinochet's brutal military coup.

About this title

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 the Publisher

One of the most popular and acclaimed Latin American authors of our century presents this unforgettable memoir, an exquisitely rendered, deeply moving mother-daughter story that doubles as her autobiography.

Paula is a soul-baring memoir one reads without drawing a breath, like a novel of suspense. The point of departure for these moving pages is a tragic personal experience. In December 1991, Isabel Allende's daughter, Paula, became gravely ill and shortly thereafter fell into a coma. During hours in the hospital, the author began to write the story of her family for her unconscious daughter. In the telling, bizarre ancestors appear before our eyes, and we hear both delightful and bitter childhood memories, amazing anecdotes of youthful years, the most intimate secrets passed along in whispers. Chile, Allende's native land, comes alive as well, with the turbulent history of the military coup of 1973, the following dictatorship and her family's years of exile.

As an exorcism of death, in these pages Isabel Allende explores the past and questions the gods. The result is a magical book that carries the reader from tears to laughter, from terror to sensuality and wisdom. Paula is a prodigious evocation and a hymn to life, written from the heart of the courageous and estimable woman who created The House of the Spirits.

About this edition

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0006548563
• ISBN 13: 9780006548560
• Binding: Paperback