Sunday, January 11, 2009

Sum of Our Days by Isabel Allende (2008)

I was surprised to find Allende in the non-fiction section, so I thought it would be interesting to read her own story, as I wanted to understand having one foot in Chile and one in the U.S. It was amazing to read how open she was about her life, her family's joys and difficulties. The book is written as if to her daughter Paula, who died in the early 1990's. Allende has already published a book about Paula, but this is about the life of the family after Paula's death and her own struggles to keep going after the enormous grief. She lives in the San Francisco area with her husband, who seems to be a saint. I loved the way she kept pulling her family around her - even no longer family, like the widow of her daughter and his new wife, or her son's ex-wife and her new female partner, or her husband's granddaughter's adoptive parents - another lesbian couple. Allende realizes that at times she meddles too much in people's lives. I didn't believe she went looking for a wife for her son, and found one! She talks of writing, of family, friends, political situations, all with humor and insight.

I have enjoyed Allende's books, her novels Daughter of Fortune, Portrait in Sepia, Inés of My Soul, Zorro, and novels for children, which I learned she had written for her grandchildren City of the Beasts and Kingdom of the Golden Dragon. (The first two I read before I started this blog.) So now I still have to read Aphrodite : A Memoir of the Senses, The House of the Spirits, Paula, My Invented Country : A Nostalgic Journey through Chile, The Infinite Plan, The Stories of Eva Luna, Of Love and Shadows , and the last of the children's books - Forest of the Pygmies. All in good time, and I believe I will start with the first two.

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