Rating: 
Summary: A reawakening of memories
Review: If you are interested on an "Idiot's Guide to Understand a Chilean" read this book. I immigrated to the US from Chile about 25 years ago. College was the reason to come. Opportunity let me stay. Reading this book brought up all kinds of memories about my upbringing and the quirkiness of my native land and people. At times, I thought that she was writing about my family. Episodes like my father driving someone who asked for directions or my grandmother resewing my frayed white shirts. I am not sure if my recommendation applies to understanding younger Chileans. I share with Ms. Allende her view of the new Chile. Consumerism and Chicago Boys policies may have changed the way Chileans are now. But for those of us who saw it before it, it was nice to remember. Bravo, Ms. Allende. You brought emotions that I have long forgotten.
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Summary: A VIEW BY A CHILEAN PATRIOT
Review: Ms. Allende presently lives near San Francisco and did live in Venezuela for 10 yrs. (to esacpe the reign of Pinochet), but her heart rests in Chile. Her gleanings about the Chilean society are encompassing and the people sound appealing. They love the idea of law and most personal transactions are made as complicated as possible with pages of details. They are generous and a guest is tended to with all possible concern and courtesy. This is a slim volume and easy to read. This is a good book to learn about Chile.
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Summary: Poetic Journey
Review: My Invented Country is Isabel Allende's best book yet. This amazing biography takes the reader on a poetic journey though Ms. Allende's young life. Her writing is stellar and poetic. This book is to be savored for its beauty of language. Writers dream of crafting sentences like these. Lovers of language will adore this book for its symmetry and grace. Readers of all ages will love it for its beautiful and absorbing story.
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Summary: Another Non-Fiction Work From Allende That Shines
Review: My Invented County is billed as "a nostalgic journey through Chile." Personally, I thought it was more of a travelogue of emotions centered on Chile. Allende channels these emotions through her trademark energetic prose to present a vivid portrayal of the Chilean personality, the emotional impact the country's landscape has on its citizens, and the social mores which dominate Chilean interactions. What never lingers long in the background of this portrayal is Allende's examination of how these elements have shaped her as a writer. This reflective tone imparts to the reader that Allende is taking stock of her life before embarking on another direction. I'm finding that I enjoy Allende's recent non-fiction books much more than her latest fictional works. The reason why is because her non-fiction contains much more passion than her fiction, which often comes off like a research project. Still, I don't think one needs to have read all of her other works to appreciate My Invented Country (although it doesn't hurt). Whether one is a long time Allende reader, a native of Chile, or neither, it'll be hard not to enjoy this touching journey though a country and a life.
Rating:
Summary: Another Non-Fiction Work From Allende That Shines
Review: My Invented County is billed as "a nostalgic journey through Chile." Personally, I thought it was more of a travelogue of emotions centered on Chile. Allende channels these emotions through her trademark energetic prose to present a vivid portrayal of the Chilean personality, the emotional impact the country's landscape has on its citizens, and the social mores which dominate Chilean interactions. What never lingers long in the background of this portrayal is Allende's examination of how these elements have shaped her as a writer. This reflective tone imparts to the reader that Allende is taking stock of her life before embarking on another direction. I'm finding that I enjoy Allende's recent non-fiction books much more than her latest fictional works. The reason why is because her non-fiction contains much more passion than her fiction, which often comes off like a research project. Still, I don't think one needs to have read all of her other works to appreciate My Invented Country (although it doesn't hurt). Whether one is a long time Allende reader, a native of Chile, or neither, it'll be hard not to enjoy this touching journey though a country and a life.
Rating:
Summary: Learning Curve
Review: My wife and I lived in Santiago, Chile 1971-1975 and revisited the country in 1993. We are impressed by the author's ability to see its people with different, more discerning perspectives of her native land than she had earlier in her writing career. Here she describes why she now prefers to live in California with an American husband willing to assume his share of household duties rather than in a democratic, relatively prosperous nation with its freedoms restored. She knows her country, the foibles of its people and its history well. Would that we had such an acute observer of our own!
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Summary: Personal dynamics of national identity by a Chilean writer
Review: Readers should not be misled by the title, referring to a journey through Chile. Certainly, this book is about Chile. And the first ten pages lay out the physical landscape, quoting the country's most famous poet Pablo Neruda, and referring the reader again to him for a soulful appreciation of the landscape:"To see my country with the heart, one must read Pablo Neruda...who in his verses immortalized the imposing landscapes, the aromas and dawns, the tenacious rain and dignified poverty, the stoicism and solitude.." But this book is not a travelogue. Nor is it a deep historical or sociological analysis of Chile. Rather, it is an intensely personal and auto biographical view of the country through the eyes of one of its best known novelists, and partly from the vantage point of San Francisco, her adopted hometown in an adopted land. The theme of displacement and identity recurs throughout the book, and very powerfully in the symoblism of the two September 11 dates which deeply marked the writer's life - the one in 1973 when her uncle Salvador Allende was overthrown and died in a violent CIA-backed military coup, and the other memorable date in 2001. Allende writes: "By a blood-chilling coincidence - histroic karma - the commandeered airplanes truck their U.S. targets on a Tuesday, Spetember 11, exactly the same day of the week and month - and at almost the same time in the morning - of the 1973 military coup in Chile, a terrorist act orchestrated by the CIA against a democracy." If you have read House of the Spirits, Eva Luna, or other novels by Isabel Allende, this book will bring out many of these fictitious characters and place names in the context of a very real history and social setting. Throughout the book, Allende seeks to present her view of what is the essence of Chile, often by contrasting it to other countries and tradtions. "African blood was never incorporated into Chilean stock which would have given us rhythm and beauty; neither was there, as there was in Argentina, significant Italian immigration, which would have made us extroverted, vain, and happy; there weren't enough Asians, as there were in Peru, to compensate for our solemnity, and spice up our cuisine." Even without being a work of fiction, this book depicts Chilean history and society with literary license, and personal anecdotes. This might be frustrating for a reader looking for clear-cut and consistent factual presentation. At times, she even appears self-contradictory in presenting different anecdotes on the same subject. Writing of Chilean food habits, she says: "Most of the executives I know suffer from diabetes because they hold their business meetings at breakfast, lunch, and dinner." Later, she writes: "I never heard the word cholesterol mentioned. My parents, who are over eighty, consume ninety eggs, a quart of cream, a pound of butter, and four pounds of cheese per week. They're healthy and lively as little kids." She similarly deals with subjects such as divorce, the role of women, and religion with anecdotes, although she occasionally sprinkles the discussion with oddly precise statistics: "Sociologists say that forty per cent of Chileans suffer from depression" or "71 percent of the population has been demanding [divorce] for a long time." It is not easy to know whether to take some of her statements at face value, as for example in her discussion of religion. On one hand, she considers Chile "the most Catholic country in the world - more Catholic than Ireland, and certainly much more so than the Vatican." But she explains that this religious belief "has a lot more to do with fetishism and superstition than with mystic restiveness or theological enlightenment." Her discussion of beliefs in Chile regarding paranormal phenomena may give us some insight into the elements of mysticism and magical realism we find in her novels. Readers who seek her views on Chilean politics may be surprised to find only one paragraph devoted to General Pinochet, of whom she is obviously and, unsurprisngly, contemptuous: "Admired by some, despised by others, feared by all, he was possibly the man in our history who has held the greatest power in his hands for the longest period of time." I found one of the most engaging parts of this book the description of the author's literary career and the forces which shaped it. It is only at the very end of the book that the unknowing reader will find out that this book helped the author deal with a tremendous personal tragedy - the loss of her daughter. If you enjoy Allende's novels or even Latin American fiction, more generally, this book provides some interesting insights from a deeply engaged writer.
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Summary: Chile Views Through the Lens of Nostalgia
Review: The terrorists attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, a traumatic day for the United States. In the same month and on the same day (Sept. 11) in 1973, Isabel Allende's Chile experienced its own trauma. On that day almost thirty years ago, a CIA-engineered military coup brought down the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, a cousin of Isabel Allende's father, and installed General Augusto Pinochet, a dictator whose reign of terror lasted for 17 years (1973-1990). Isabel Allende has never forgiven Nixon, Kissinger & Co. for what she describes as an arrogant and brutal attack on human rights. Nor was Chile an isolated case of America's bungled foreign policy. "The United States," she Allende, "has had a shameful record of overthrowing legally elected governments and of supporting tyrannies that would never be tolerated in its own territory: Papa Doc in Haiti, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Somoza in Nicaragua, and many others." But the news is not all bad. In Allende's opinion "the United States is beginning to realize that its policy of supporting tyranny does not solve problems--it merely creates new ones." Born in Peru in 1942, Isabel Allende was reared in Santiago, Chile. Her new work, My Invented Country, is a memoir of her life as an exile and immigrant, wanderer and outsider. "I never fit in anywhere," says Allende, "not into my family, my social class, or the religion fate bestowed on me. . . . When I was fifteen, I left the church forever and acquired a horror of religions in general and monotheistic faiths in particular. . . . My religion, should anyone be interested, can be reduced to a simple question: What is the most generous thing one can do in this case?" At age 35, Allende became a divorcee. She then married Willie Gordon, an American lawyer, and now lives in San Francisco. Although far from her homeland, she carries within her a haunting memory of her childhood home, and takes us on a nostalgic, and often painful, journey through Chile. Her essay in memory reveals a love-hate relationship with her native land. On the one hand her comments-- censorious, condemnatory, and caustically critical--reveal a seething fury; on the other hand, she writes with genuine affection for the foibles idiosyncrasies, the virtues and vices, of her people. Although Allende admits that her version of the truth is mythic ("memory twists in an out, like an endless Mobius strip"), her portrait of Chile--its people, customs, traditions, religion, economy, and politics--seems candidly honest. According to Allende, typical Chilean characteristics are generosity, a tendency to compromise rather than confront, a legalistic mentality, respect for authority, enthusiasm for political argument, and resignation to a crushing bureaucracy. "The problem [of bureaucracy] has reached such proportions," she writes, "that the government itself has created an office to combat bureaucracy. . . . Kafka was Chilean." Like a jewel serendipitously discovered, My Invented Country sparkles with the revelation of painful truth, a freshness of wit and wisdom, and a hilarious sense of humor. It's a precious literary gem.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Delightful
Review: This book is delightful, humorous, and beautiful like its author. A wonderful memoir full of insights about Chile and about life in the US. This book reflects Allende's warmth and passion. A brilliant book from a brilliant writer. Highly recommended.
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Summary: Not the best of Allende
Review: This book tells us the story of the author's life in a short version. I personally liked the way she portraits Chile, past and present. But I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who has already read "Paula". In "Paula" she writes the story of her life while she is taking care of her daughter, who has a fatal disease, in "My invented country" she tells us the story of her life (again), because of the nostalgia she feels when her grandson asks her a question about being old, only in a shorter way and contributing with facets about her country. So when I read this book a lot of times I thought "I remember this" or "I knew this already". As another reviewer said, "she is loosing her touch". I hope she comes up with a brand new idea next time.
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