Paula

author
Isabel Allende

heads up
this book masterfully defies the boundaries of genre.

plot synopsis in 50 words or fewer
An exquisite work that is deftly written. When Isabel Allende's daughter, Paula, became gravely ill, Allende began to tell and write their family's story to her comatose daughter.

what really matters
Allende's Paula changed the face of memoir forever. Combining her own experience sitting sentry at her daughter's hospital bed with the anecdotes, characters, and intimacies inherent in every family story, Allende manages to paint a powerful picture of a family intertwined with the history of a nation. Allende manages to impart a luscious, vivid, and terrifying history of Chile before, during and following the Pinochet years. This "memoir" crackles with Allende's love of words and stories, and comes at you like a bolt of lightening. It is a brilliant, powerful, moving work by an author whose prowess of the pen forces you into delighted submission. A life changer that proves once and for all the sheer force of storytelling and the value it adds to life. Hands down, Allende's best work.

some of the hype
"Brilliant...Allende's best work to date."
—The New York Times

Beautiful and heart-rendering...Memoir, autobiography, epicedium, perhaps even some fiction: they are all here, and they are all quite wonderful."
—Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Once again, Isabel Allende cracks open the novelist's door to a houseful of vivid and colorful characters, as memorable as any she has portrayed in [her] best-seliing fictional works."
—San Francisco Chronicle

some other things this author has written
The House of the Spirits
Of Love and Shadows
Eva Luna
Stories of Eva Luna
The Infinite Plan
Aphrodite
Daughter of Fortune
Portrait in Sepia
My Invented Country
Zorro
City of the Beasts
Kingdom of the Golden Dragon
Forest of the Pygmies