Rating: 
Summary: Introduction to Chile and Allende
Review: "My Invented Country" is an enjoyable, highly personal view of Chile, interesting for anyone (like me) wanting to find out more about that country, and I suppose for readers familiar with Isabel Allende's fiction. Not only does Allende try to explain her country and its people, she also tells how they both inspired her writing.Chile comes over as a diverse place; in topography, fauna, flora, climate and history. It seems to possess great beauty (even great food) yet it has violent colonial and recent pasts: although the brutality of treatment accorded to its indigenous inhabitants hardly makes it unique. According to Allende, Chileans are the most reticent and understated of South Americans, seeing themselves as being close in temperamental terms to the British. Never having met a Chilean, I can't pass judgement on this, and I always become nervous whenever nations are reduced to stereotypes - individuals have a habit of upsetting preconceptions. Whether Chileans should be comforted or reassured that one of their number thinks they are like the British, I don't know. I suspect we British would not care one way or the other. Allende fills her book with anecdotes from her past to illustrate her more general observations - as such the book is full of what a foreign reader would regard as eccentrics. All very entertaining, but a deep sense of regret runs throughout the book too. The fact that Allende fled Chile following the CIA-inspired coup, only to return much later to a country which had changed greatly in the intervening period, makes it almost inevitable that nostalgia for a "lost country" dominates her thoughts. The title of the book gives this away, and Allende's absence could merely have accentuated (in her case) the feelings of affection for childhood and youth that sometimes comes with growing older. Nostalgia can be a dangerously misleading state of mind, but I felt that Allende critique of modern Chile's obsession which market economics and consumerism at the cost of widnening social inequalities hit home not just for Chile. I expected a thorough condemnation of the Pinochet regime. However, Allende trys to be fair (as far as anyone can be fair to such a brutal dictatorship). She argues that Salvador Allende's government was by no means a perfect one - far from it. Although this does not excuse the coup, it contradicts the myth that the coup was a Chilean version of Paradise Lost. Don't expect a straightforward history of modern Chile, or a autobiographical essay. Rather, it's a mixture of impressions and recollections, both on a personal and national level. What you see is what you get as far as the title of the book is concerned. G Rodgers
Rating:
Summary: Introduction to Chile and Allende
Review: "My Invented Country" is an enjoyable, highly personal view of Chile, interesting for anyone (like me) wanting to find out more about that country, and I suppose for readers familiar with Isabel Allende's fiction. Not only does Allende try to explain her country and its people, she also tells how they both inspired her writing. Chile comes over as a diverse place; in topography, fauna, flora, climate and history. It seems to possess great beauty (even great food) yet it has violent colonial and recent pasts: although the brutality of treatment accorded to its indigenous inhabitants hardly makes it unique. According to Allende, Chileans are the most reticent and understated of South Americans, seeing themselves as being close in temperamental terms to the British. Never having met a Chilean, I can't pass judgement on this, and I always become nervous whenever nations are reduced to stereotypes - individuals have a habit of upsetting preconceptions. Whether Chileans should be comforted or reassured that one of their number thinks they are like the British, I don't know. I suspect we British would not care one way or the other. Allende fills her book with anecdotes from her past to illustrate her more general observations - as such the book is full of what a foreign reader would regard as eccentrics. All very entertaining, but a deep sense of regret runs throughout the book too. The fact that Allende fled Chile following the CIA-inspired coup, only to return much later to a country which had changed greatly in the intervening period, makes it almost inevitable that nostalgia for a "lost country" dominates her thoughts. The title of the book gives this away, and Allende's absence could merely have accentuated (in her case) the feelings of affection for childhood and youth that sometimes comes with growing older. Nostalgia can be a dangerously misleading state of mind, but I felt that Allende critique of modern Chile's obsession which market economics and consumerism at the cost of widnening social inequalities hit home not just for Chile. I expected a thorough condemnation of the Pinochet regime. However, Allende trys to be fair (as far as anyone can be fair to such a brutal dictatorship). She argues that Salvador Allende's government was by no means a perfect one - far from it. Although this does not excuse the coup, it contradicts the myth that the coup was a Chilean version of Paradise Lost. Don't expect a straightforward history of modern Chile, or a autobiographical essay. Rather, it's a mixture of impressions and recollections, both on a personal and national level. What you see is what you get as far as the title of the book is concerned. G Rodgers
Rating:
Summary: Thanks for the memories!
Review: A very nice trip down memory lane with one of my favorite authors. In this memoir, Allende traverses the expanse of her memory to provide a glimpse of her life and relations in Chile. This is a well-written chronicle of Chile's history during the author's lifetime. The country's customs, political atmosphere, and landscape are portrayed with insight and humor. The novel presents a quick, informative and heartfelt introduction to a country still in the making. If you are an Allende fan, you will find that you are reliving your experiences with the author's previous works as she relives her experiences in Chile. The book was enough to have me add Chile to my list must see places.
Rating:
Summary: Thanks for the memories!
Review: A very nice trip down memory lane with one of my favorite authors. In this memoir, Allende traverses the expanse of her memory to provide a glimpse of her life and relations in Chile. This is a well-written chronicle of Chile's history during the author's lifetime. The country's customs, political atmosphere, and landscape are portrayed with insight and humor. The novel presents a quick, informative and heartfelt introduction to a country still in the making. If you are an Allende fan, you will find that you are reliving your experiences with the author's previous works as she relives her experiences in Chile. The book was enough to have me add Chile to my list must see places.
Rating: 
Summary: Home is Where the Heart is.
Review: Allende is informality and ease. She writes to converse with herself and, by association, her mirror (her memory). Some readers may find this book tautologic; I, on the other hand, find it sweeping and far-reaching in terms of further self-definition. Allende's book this time is also autobiographical. I'm not surprised, being aware of the hearty particulars that had given her sense of existence its essence and, equally, its toilsome burden. A Chilean proud of her heritage and all what it entails, she journeys into the realms of the intangible. Her butterflying into the subtle poetics of her own identity, that obstinate and incessant beloved called 'home,' and reality that sometimes retroverts, deconstructs, or is itself deconstructed by the sudden whims of history, or better yet, the mode of our grasping it, she entraps it all by the wit of a Wildean Dandy. She is not an Absurdist heroine, mind you, but an Eva Luna impassioned by her own memory. She doesn't recount it as it 'is,' since the only absolute is relativity itself, but as she remembers it, as she actualizes the whereabouts of 'home,' yielding as she goes to feeling: the extremum of Truth. The T is majuscule - how can it not be when feeling is its signified.
Rating:
Summary: almost Faulknerish
Review: Allende's original work must be beautifully and well written in Spanish or else the translator did an excellent job. Seems to me that her writing is almost Faulkner-ish... a kind of classical ranting while accounting for family history and characters through personal experience and skewed perspectives... almost what is called stream of consciousness with many threads off tangent. Her style comes across more like she is thinking out loud instead of just telling a story. Sometimes it seems as if she is singing. Her words boast of a personality stronger than cultural traditions and expectations. Allende displays a personality ready to face the world, yet unwilling to forgo a staccatto past.
Rating:
Summary: almost Faulknerish
Review: Allende's original work must be beautifully and well written in Spanish or else the translator did an excellent job. Seems to me that her writing is almost Faulkner-ish... a kind of classical ranting while accounting for family history and characters through personal experience and skewed perspectives... almost what is called stream of consciousness with many threads off tangent. Her style comes across more like she is thinking out loud instead of just telling a story. Sometimes it seems as if she is singing. Her words boast of a personality stronger than cultural traditions and expectations. Allende displays a personality ready to face the world, yet unwilling to forgo a staccatto past.
Rating:
Summary: An Eloquent Giant
Review: Because Isabel Allende is one of my absolute favorite and most admired writers (bar none), I pride myself in having read all her published novels and stories --in the original Spanish, then the English translations. With the publication in 1982 of la casa de los espÃritus [The House of The Spirits], Allende merged as one of the most important literary voices of her generation. Her works are characterized by a deliberate recurrence of certain pronounced elements: realism, family, history, fantasy. This delicately balanced admixture produces the fusion of realism and fantasy [el realismo mágico]--the artfully narrative world reminiscent of Alejo Carpentier and Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez. Additionally, the predominance of female protagonists in her novels and stories is readily evidenced. Strong, independent, and intelligent, Allende's women know how to enjoy life and don't fear men in the least. Nor do these bold female protagonists allow themselves to be defeated by their circumstances --all this is quite revolutionary in Latin American literature. Totally, Allende's feminine perspective dramatically alters and enriches the horizon of contemporary Latin American fiction. So, any work by Isabel Allende is a treasure. She is an eloquent giant of a talent. MY INVENTED COUNTRY [Mi paÃs inventado: un paseo nostálgico por Chile], while certainly not a work of fiction, is nevertheless very valuable in any Allende collection and worth reading. Alan Cambeira
Author of AZUCAR! The Story of Sugar
Rating:
Summary: A Chilephile's delight
Review: I guess one could describe this book as a beautiful woman's description of a beautiful country and its charming people. Let me get my prejudices out right up front: I have been fascinated by everything Chileno for over thirty years. The country has an amazing history, an incredibly varied topography (when God finished creating the world, he had a little bit of everything left over...so it He put it all in Chile) and wonderful people. Isabel Allende's nostalgic reminiscenses about her family and homeland are insightful, poignant and witty. The author commendably keeps politics to a minimum, but consequently barely touches on her country's troubled recent past and the healing process that is still a work in progress. Moreover, since Ms. Allende writes as an exile, one wonders whether her characterizations remain accurate in the aftermath of the rise and fall of Pinochet. Be that as it may, this is a delightful glimpse into the Chilean persona. This slim volume is not literature, but after reading Ms. Allende's paean to Chile, I was left with only two desires: to visit the country again as soon as possible and to meet the author. Fortunately the former is always an option.
Rating: 
Summary: Another intriguing Isabel Allende memoir
Review: I wonder how many memoirs this woman can write and still keep the reader captivated? This book was a delightful read, the kind that you can easily get into on a 45-minute bus ride to work. I think what I'll take away from it is her medaphor of transplanted tree roots clinging to the clumps of dirt from their previous place of residence. Another thing that stuck with me is her distinction between an exhile and an immigrant. This book kept me interested more than "Aphrodite" but still doesn't inspire me to delve into more Allende works.
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