Born Aug. 2, 1942, Isabel Allende, renowned 84-year-old Chilean-American author of more than 30 books spanning a career of four decades, invites readers to explore the craft of writing in her most recent publication. Part memoir, part instruction manual, Story Telling is more than a list of things writers can do to achieve successful careers. It is a testimony to how one’s life shapes the way one sees the world and writes about it.
Allende explores her family dynamics, the political upheaval she experienced, and the sense of rootlessness that resulted, which ironically helped her to observe people and events with emotional intensity, passion, and astute clarity.
About the uprootedness she endured and that shaped her writing life, Allende writes, “The fact that I have always been a foreigner has marked my life and my writing. I would not be a novelist today if I had remained in Chile. I would probably be a retired journalist. I have been a traveler, an exile, and an immigrant. I have lived in a few countries and from some I escaped by a hairbreadth: from violence in Bolivia in the (19)50s, to the beginnings of a civil war in Lebanon in 1958, to a military coup in Chile in 1973, to crime and political violence in Venezuela in the late ’80s.”
Allende asserts that the reason her novels have been translated into more than 42 languages and have widespread appeal is “because my books are about relationships and feelings that we all share. A grandmother in Helsinki and a teenager in Guayaquil might cry over the same story because they recognize themselves in those characters. The human condition is determined by the ways in which we relate to one another and by the emotions that motivate us. We all feel love, hope, hate, desire, in more or less the same way.”
Allende doesn’t shy away from sharing how aging has impacted her storytelling life and her ability to engage with the world. With self-deprecating humor and unwavering honesty, she writes, “The trite phrase that time flies is a painful truth that has been on my mind constantly since I turned 80. I have not finished my Monday and it’s already Thursday; Sundays are stepping on each other’s heels; I just took down the tree ornaments and it’s Christmas again. … The day dawns with an orange sky and a squadron of pelicans in the lagoon. I stretch my bones, make coffee, start to write … and when I look through the window, I realize, frightened, that the sun is setting and the day has yielded me very few pages.”
Raised in the Catholic Church, Allende later abandoned the faith of her childhood. Reformed readers who engage with Allende’s narrative will encounter her religious beliefs as shaped by the superstitions of her ancestors, the trauma of violence and rootlessness she experienced, magical realism, and ultimately, her unwavering focus on the hope of an individual’s redemption, as manifested by her characters, many of whom were seemingly beyond rescue.
(Ballantine Books)