Isabel Allende: Life and Spirits

Un apasionante libro sobre la vida a la obra de la autora mas destacada de las letras latinoamericanas contemporaneas. Celia Correas Zapata ha conseguido trazar la trayectoria vital y literaria de Isabel Allende en su propia voz al hilo de una serie de entrevistas que nos desvelan su vida, su entorno familiar y la genesis y creacion de sus principales titulos. Desde su infancia junto a su madre Panchita, su primera lectora y critica de sus libros, pasando por el descubrimiento de historias y personajes que luego se reflejarian en su narrativa, hasta el analisis de su obra, su concepcion de la literatura, el exito, la tragedia de su hija Paula, su vida cotidiana... Isabel Allende: Vida y espiritu permite por primera vez entrar en la intimidad de la gran autora chilena, la mujer de carne y hueso que firma obras que sacuden las fibras intimas de millones de lectores en todo el mundo. En definitiva, he aqui a la verdadera Isabel Allende, la que todos queriamos conocer. --- from book's back cover

The simplest description of this book is that it is a short biography of renowned hispanic writer Isabel Allende, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden. It is based on a series of taped interviews between Zapata and Allende made at Zapata's instigation after many years of cajoling, following the beginning of their friendship in the 1980s. It was Zapata, a professor of Latin American literature at San Jose State University, who convinced Isabel, then a new best-selling author living in Venezuela and also newly divorced, to include California in a lecture tour promoting her popular novels in the USA for the first time. In their first meeting at San Jose it was Celia who introduced Isabel to the man who would later become Isabel's second husband, William Gordon. This in turn led to Isabel moving her home from Venezuela to California. The interviews that became this book occurred at regular intervals over a whole year in a rented hotel room near San Francisco Airport, half way between San Jose and Isabel's new home in San Rafael. In one interview Isabel says, "Why do I write? Because I am filled with stories that demand to be told, because the words are choking me, because I like and need to write, because if I don't write my soul dries up and I die." I like Allende's books, and I like her personally even more after reading this compelling biography. It's an easy read, and also includes a helpful chronology of Isabel's complicated life from 1942 to 2002.

As new fan of Isabel Allende, buying this book has helped me to understand the woman behind those fascinating books that kept me up all night and whose characters haunted me during thed day. The collection of family photos is most amazing, connecting strings will magically flow between Isabel's loved ones and her most remembered characters. After reading it you are under the impression that Isabel is actually the woman in every woman !

As new fan of Isabel Allende, buying this book has helped me to understand the woman behind those fascinating books that kept me up all night and whose characters haunted me during thed day. The collection of family photos is most amazing, connecting strings will magically flow between Isabel's loved ones and her most remembered characters. After reading it you are under the impression that Isabel is actually the woman in every woman !