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Summary: Life Re-affirming
Review: The eloquent prose of this book allows us to glimpse the turbulent times that Isabel Allende lived through and how her life was affected. The profound forces of the Chilean Revolution shifted her life perspective and how she dealt with the obstacles thrown in her way. These changes helped her understand the depth of strength which she drew upon to help her daughter pass into the last phase of life with dignity. This is a must read for anyone who has read or intends to read any of her other books because it shares historical family details which give her writings a new depth of understanding and intimacy.
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Summary: Allende's Masterpiece
Review: The life of Isabel Allende is told during one of the most emotional times of her life. The illness of her daughter, Paula, forced her to withdaw from her own life. This time allowed her to reflect on her life using the medium she is most familiar with: writing. The reader feels every emotion that Allende experiences from the helplessness she feels at the side of her daughter's hospital bed to the joy of past memories. The prose is incredibly beautiful and the honesty of her words convey her emotions as she lived them. At the end, I felt a greater appreciation toward life. I was left with a sense of hope that life will continue. That death is just the next threshold. Allende masterfully turned raw human emotion into a memoir that will allow anyone who reads it to experience joy in the good times and heartache during the bad. Allende gave her past to her daughter and gave people across the globe a renewed hope in life.
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Summary: Beautiful
Review: A beautiful book about the love between a mother and her dying daughter. The strength the mother finds to deal with the premonitions, and the actual death of her daughter are described using beautiful language. A sad but beautifully inspiring story.
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Summary: Paula
Review: An enthralling saga of the life on the author and her family, told to her daughter, Paula, while she lay in a coma. I couldn't put it down!
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Summary: Beautiful and painful book
Review: Isabelle Allende is one of those writers that has a rare gift of transforming the brutal and painful into the beautiful and transendent. This book takes the worst year of Isabelle Allende's life and makes you love her work and her more than ever before.Like with House of the Spirits, this book began as a letter to a dying loved one and became something else. Allende tells everything from her days in Chile as a humorist, to fleeing the country to the collapse of her marriage. She takes you inside her life as she writes House of the Spirits to say goodbye to her grandfather, Of Love and Shadows to deal with the brutal dictatorship that became her homeland and Eva Luna where she admits to being a novelist and then gets stuck with the fact that her intended conclusion doesn't work for the main character. I even felt bad about disliking The Infinite Plan as it is a love letter to her second husband. As you probably can figure, this is not an easy novel to take. Paula dies and she shouldn't die anymore than anyone should die so young. But it's not all painful, there is some true greatness throughout. There's laughter and there's beauty. This is truly a journey. A life infused with magic, you want to meet Allende as soon as you are done with it.
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Summary: Hola, Mama
Review: PAULA ISABEL ALLENDE Hola, Mama, sé que quizás no puedas leer esta carta, pero de todos modos quería escribirte. No sé si habré heredado de ti esa necesidad de ficcionalizar la vida o los largos meses de inmovilidad me han hecho hacer esto. Agradezco los cuidados que me prodigaste desde que entre en este mundo donde puedo sentir, ver, oler, pero no hablar. Sé que mis grandes ojos te miran a veces desde el umbral de la consciencia, desde esa fracción de alma que aun permanece atada a mi cuerpo. Hubiera agradecido mas si desde el principio hubieses luchado menos por mantenerme mas tiempo a tu lado y me hubieses dejado partir, pero tu orgullo de madre te ha tomado por no solo conservarme viva durante casi un año sino también preservar la parte de mí que esta en el hospital en tu larga carta que ahora todos leen. No serás una premio Nobel mama, pero gracias por el empeño en mantener la imagen de alguien común y corriente que tu cariño de madre transformo en un ángel y en ser lleno de sabiduría. Sé que en este mundo existen seres aun mas perfectos y acabados de los que piensas y con peores fines y vidas truncadas. Alguna vez te dije que buscaba a Dios y no lo encontraba, quien sabe si ahora estoy con él. Esa duda no voy a despejarla yo, debo dejar que tú lo hagas, como debo dejar que cada ser humano encuentre su camino y mi camino era morir para inspirarte vida y un éxito de ventas. Que ironía madre, verdad.? Yo que jamas me afane por lo material me veo convertida en dinero, en unas cuantas paginas de una novela... Gracias también por dejarme ver el lado de Chile que nunca vi, pues estaba muy pequeña, puede que desde tu óptica las cosas no sean más verdaderas que en los libros, pero es la historia tal como la viviste y en eso no tengo derecho a cuestionarte. Sé que la vida continuara sin mí, que Ernesto seguirá vivo y aunque jamas me olvide sobrevivirá a esta crisis, al menos se que tu ya has alcanzado la catarsis con tu larga carta que no termina. Un beso a todos, los amo y desde donde estoy no puedo cambiar la vida, ni los hechos que sucederán, solo puedo mantenerme observadora de las cosas y confiada en que todo saldrá bien Te quiero. PAULA Luis Mendez
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Summary: A wonderful work of Latin American Literature
Review: Reading "PAULA" was a magnificent experience. I have read all of Allende's books, but none quiet as touching. It took me from tears to laughter with the turn of a page. Allende is definately one of the greatest along with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Laura Esquibel and Angeles Mastreta.
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Summary: disturbing
Review: Though this is definitly a very well written book, as all of Allende's are - there were many disturbing elements to it. The most disturbing element was that Allende states she is writting this "letter" to her dying daughter, and is "cashing-in" on her illness and death. I found this initial premise very difficult to swallow. I found her discussions of her sexual relations with her lovers disturbing - i don't know how many mothers discuss this with their daughters, nor did i see a need for it. The whole Chile, Pinochet dictatorship is disturbing beyond reason as she so eloquently describes the brutalities committed by this regime - the loss of life, los desaparecidos, the constant fear of the people, the exilees, etc. Her daughter's illness and the inability on the part of the doctors and nurses to do anything for her is disturbing and heartwrenching. Despite these disturbing elements we are privy to the innermost thoughts of a mother in despair over her dying daughter, to the real life experiences of one who lived Pionochet's dictatorship, and to the most interesting life/family of Isabel Allende. I would not recommend this book to those feint of heart as it is overall a very disturbing book. I would however highly recommend it to those who can stomach such drama and tragedy.
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Summary: A compelling memoir
Review: For those of you who are familiar with this author, I believe this is Isabel Allende's best work. In order to cope with the pain and impotence of seeing her cherished daughter slowly dying, she tells her the story of their family and examines their relationship between themselves and those around them, intertwined with the development of Paula's illness and her progressive decline. The stories are outrageous, droll, sad, endearing, and moving; those who have read her previous books will find many interesting things here to complement them, taken right out of the author and her family's lives. Nobody can resist this mixture of laughs and tears, and the author manages to convey her feelings of despair and sadness, but without too much sentimentalism; it is impossible to pity her, the way she fights with all her strenght to keep her daughter from suffering and the ravages of her disease. This is not only a memoir, but also a mother's testimony of love and courage.
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Summary: Paula: An introspective trip
Review: Isabel Allende shares with a vast list of authors, García Márquez, Ecco, among them, the passion for telling stories. The author tells us in this extensive letter to "Paula", Isabel's daughter who is in a coma, her own story: her life, a life experienced by other people in the history of many countries. In this sense, her story has been the story of many: dictators are a common enemy to all nations. Dictators like Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, or Pinochet triggered numerous tragedies in history. They imposed the power of a minority by force at the cost of the liberty and equality of the majority. The once ruler of Chile, Pinochet, forever changed the lives of thousands of people and Isabel Allende is an example. She became a subversive. In this introspective trip she tells us about the deep scars of a dictatorship, about a way of escaping the horror, about a way to survive in exile, and the pain of leaving everything behind: childhood, family, friends, and homeland. This story tells us about ourselves in other ways because it construct the frame in which the quintessence of the human being hangs: innocence, ignorance, curiosity, mistakes, love, and death. Isabel Allende makes evident the fragility and, at the same time, the endurance of the human being, and to her surprise her own. Human mind and body are malleable and thanks to this quality are able to adapt to the most inhospitable of cultures and situations. And the author tells us about the writting process: a metamorphosis carried by the language from the inner experience to the creature called the novel. This is a deep story. The author takes you with her on a trip to hersefl and makes you experience her pain and joy, always written with beautiful prose, making this trip worthy.
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