The Sum of Our Days: A Memoir | Isabel Allende

The Sum of Our Days: A Memoir | Isabel Allende | Isabel Allende: Raw and Honest

books:

The Sum of Our Day...

	The Sum of Our Days: A Memoir Isabel Allende Harper, 2008 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 20 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

The Power of Family

Wow, what a rollicking read. I kept having to remind myself that this was a memoir and not one of Allende's novels. Lesser women would have crawled into a hole having lived through the tragedy and day to day uproar of her life, but Isabel Allende just keeps drawing the hurt and struggling into her family circle and that extended family supports each other and moves forward together. She is truly a matriarch who, as she admits, sometimes needs to be reined in a bit.

Sometimes she needs to reach outside the family for support. That is when the "sisters of disorder" step in.

"Though I had just met her, I told her what was happening with you.
"We are going to pray for your daughter and for you", she told me. A
month later she invited me to her 'prayer circle,' and that is how
these new friends came to accompany me during your agony and death...
and continue to comfort me today. For me it is a sisterhood sealed in
heaven. Every woman in this world should have such a circle of
friends. Each of us is witness to the others; lives; we keep secrets,
help in difficulties, share experiences, and stay in almost daily
contact by e-mail. However far I may be traveling, I always have my
lie to terra firma: my sisters of disorder."

This book is a testament to the power of love of every kind. It is a gift to read.

for more information click here

Isabel Allende: Raw and Honest

I have read many of Isabel Allende's books and found that when she writes about real life as opposed to fiction, her narrative is much more convincing because when she speaks about real events she eliminates the romanticism and the supernatural that so often are injected in her writing. What we are left with is raw Allende, with no pretensions and complete honesty. She reveals much and hides almost nothing. She reveals that she has had plastic surgery as well as sheds lights about her thoughts of divorce and her experience in therapy to resolve her marriage issues. Her self-reflection reveals that she knows her faults and accepts them. She could have portrayed a glossy picture of her life but she chose to show us the messy, often painful details of a woman whom we could identify with. Her insight and wit, combined with her style of weaving the story of her daily life are what give the reader the motivation to read this autobiographical account of her life. We are not so much as interested in the details of her life as we are in how she recounts them. She reveals herself as self-depracating and insightful, practical, yet at times fanciful. Allende's complicated and interesting account of her life captivate the reader throughout the book.

for more information click here

Allende's Memoir

Isabel Allende is a teller of tales, and excels in her craft, again.

For realism, she doesn't make any of the characters fully likable -- all have human warts. The tale/memoir is told with love and acceptance from a matriarch's viewpoint. If you like a story well told, with people who live, read her works. My favorite is still her first, but this one bears more than one reading.

reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4

products you might be interested in