The latter, especially, move easily and comfortably through these pages, just as vividly as mine live with me and yours with you. Isabel Allende lives in a world that seems pantheistic, so vividly alive are all its things, its places, its people, its spirits.

This new book, Paula, while technically nonfiction and stunningly personal, even intimate, glories in all the virtues of her best stories. Her others, particularly Eva Luna and The Stories of Eva Luna, further enhanced her reputation.

An unabashed storyteller, she won instant acclaim with her first novel, The House of the Spirits. “Isabel Allende is among the most popular writers of our time, in any language, and she certainly is one of the best. “Beautiful and heart-rending…Memoir, autobiography, epicedium, perhaps even some fiction: they are all here, and they are all quite wonderful.”

“A deeply affecting tale, written in the rich, luminous prose typical of Allende’s novels…Highly recommended.” “Spellbinding…in flawlessly rich prose shares with us her most intimate feelings.” Magnificently translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, this is an emotionally charged, spellbinding memoir.” “In flawlessly rich prose shares with us her most intimate feelings as she learns to accept that her daughter will never be rescued and that the only thing that Allende can do is give comfort to an inert and unresponsive human being. The memories are vivid and imaginative: ‘In my grandfather’s house, which was as long as a railroad,’ she recalls, ‘the walls were so thin that our dreams intermingled at night.’” She ranges across time, balancing the intoxications of love and magical moments in her family’s past with the maddening intractability of Paula’s coma. This is a book about a daughter’s death, but it also is Allende’s story-lush with her memories, impressions and passions: vibrant with strange lands, rich lives, and grand characters: pulsating with an almost unbearable love of words.” “The narrative magic that thundered through Allende’s first novel, The House of the Spirits, triumphs here, too. A magician with words, Allende makes this grim scenario into a wondrous encounter with the innermost sorrows and joys of another human being.” Writing nonfiction for the first time, she interweaves the story of her own life with the slow dying of her 28-year-old daughter, Paula. “Allende is a mesmerizing novelist who here takes on a double challenge. Int'l Women's Conference - México, 2013.Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Ceremony, 2017.

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