Lorna's Reviews > Paula - 1st Edition/1st Printing

Paula by Isabel Allende is an autobiographical account of her family's experiences in Chile, writing feverishly at the bedside of her daughter, Paula, as she lay in a coma from a genetic neurological disease in Barcelona, Spain. At first it was written for Paula so that she will not be lost or afraid when she awoke; then as it became clearer that this wouldn't happen, Allende continued to write as a cathartic of the time her family was driven from their home in Chile following the military coup of 1973 and the assassination of her uncle, Salvador Allende. She speaks to life in her beloved Chile during the tyrannical regime of Augusto Pinochet. She recounts the time her beloved grandfather was dying. Unable to return to Chile, she began writing him a letter but as she continued to write, Allende announced to her family that she had written a book. This became a bestseller in Latin America, and soon, around the world, The House of Spirits. Woven throughout the book Paula, Isabel Allende writes of Paula, the beautiful child that she was, and the courageous and giving adult that she became. It is very much a process of the stages of grief and letting go of someone that we love, as she embraces Paula's new husband and the process where together they realize that they must let Paula go. This was a beautiful and loving tribute, not only to Paula, but to Isabel Allende.

On a personal note, visiting Latin America in 1981, I became very drawn to the politics and literature of that time, particularly in Colombia, Chile and Argentina. It was hard to forget the beautiful city of Santiago, as we all gazed upon the Palace of Governors and were told that this is where Salvador Allende "committed suicide." Or during our stay in Buenos Aires, looking down from my hotel window and seeing women marching in the park below, all dressed in black, including lace mantillas, and carrying signs with the names of family members who had disappeared. This was the weekly march of the mothers of the disappeared, the desaparecidos. Lastly, having had the pleasure and honor of attending a few book signings with Isabel Allende, she always signs her books with a flower. It is in this book, she relates as the dictatorship of Pinochet was becoming more oppressive, she accepted many of the external signs of the Flower Children, "adopting flowers in her clothing, painting them on the walls of their home and car--enormous yellow sunflowers and bright dahlias. . . "

I am Chilean, I come from a 'long petal of sea and wine and snow,' as Pablo Neruda described my country, and you're from there, too, Paula, even though you bear the indelible stamp of the Caribbean where you spent the years of your childhood."

"In Chile, we are influenced by the eternal presence of the mountains that separate us from the rest of the continent, and by a sense of precariousness inevitable in a region of geological and political catastrophes. Everything trembles beneath our feet; we know no security."

" I was transported with implacable clarity to the times I lived in Chile under the heavy mantle of terror: censorship and self-censorship, denunciations, curfew, soldiers with faces camouflaged . . . arrests in the street, homes, offices. . . .helping fugitives find asylum, sleepless nights when we had someone hidden in our home, clumsy schemes to slip information out of the country."

"It came to me how for countless centuries women have lost their children, how it is humanity's most ancient and inevitable sorrow. I am not alone, most mothers know this pain, it breaks their heart but they go on living because they must protect and love those who are left."