My Invented Country

April 28, 2003
Allende's novels—The House of the Spirits; Eva Luna; Daughter of Fortune; etc.—are of the sweeping epic variety, often historical and romantic, weaving in elements of North and South American culture. As with most fiction writers, Allende's work is inspired by personal experiences, and in this memoir-cum-study of her "home ground," the author delves into the history, social mores and idiosyncrasies of Chile, where she was raised, showing, in the process, how that land has served as her muse. Allende was born in Peru in 1942, but spent much of her childhood—and a significant portion of her adulthood—in Santiago (she now lives in California). She ruminates on Chilean women (their "attraction lies in a blend of strength and flirtatiousness that few men can resist"); the country's class system ("our society is like a phyllo pastry, a thousand layers, each person in his place"); and Chile's turbulent history ("the political pendulum has swung from one extreme to another; we have tested every system of government that exists, and we have suffered the consequences"). She readily admits her view is subjective—to be sure, she is not the average Chilean (her stepfather was a diplomat; her uncle, Salvador Allende, was Chile's president from 1970 until his assassination in 1973). And at times, her assessments transcend Chile, especially when it comes to comments on memory and nostalgia. This is a reflective book, lacking the pull of Allende's fiction but unearthing intriguing elements of the author's captivating history. Agents, Carmen Balcells and Gloria Gutiérrez. (June)Forecast:Despite a six-city author tour and advertising in the
Miami Herald,
New York Times Book Review and
San Francisco Chronicle, this book probably won't attract as much attention as Allende's fiction does. Still, after having written 10 other books, Allende's developed a strong fan base, and her loyal readers will undoubtedly clamor for this.

June 1, 2003
Allende, the best-selling author of The House of Spirits and Portraits in Sepia, here offers a moving portrait of her native Chile and, by looking back on her youth, family, and country's history, considers how Chile has shaped her writing. Focusing on the unique characteristics of the country and its people, she reveals incidents and individuals-both friends and family-who figure in her semiautobiographical novels. She also talks briefly about Pinochet's 1973 coup, but more information about the author's experience and opinions on that topic can be found in her memoir Paula, which is the story of her life written during the illness and death of her daughter. Her current memoir is entertaining and provides a fuller understanding of her works. Recommended for academic libraries and any public library where her work is popular. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/03.]-Sheila Kasperek, North Hall Lib., Mansfield, PA

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2003
Famed British literary critic Wood, late of the Guardian, crafts a first novel whose protagonist is secretly writing a major screed called The Book Against God but can't quite bring himself to confront his preacher father.

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2003
Allende was inspired to write this glimmering and audacious memoir of her life as a traveler, exile, and immigrant by an eerie overlaying of dates. She lost a country, she writes, on Tuesday, September 11, 1973, when a military coup brought down Chile's democratic government, then headed by Salvador Allende, a cousin of her father's. And she gained a country on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, when the terrorist attacks induced her to recognize her deep allegiance to the U.S., her adopted land. Drawing on the profoundly fluent storytelling skills and canniness that make her fiction so scintillating and her memoirs so powerful, Allende retraces her circuitous path from Santiago circa 1940 to today's San Francisco, remembering her family and critiquing her country with equal measures of nostalgia and pain, fury and humor. She observes curtly that in her eccentric family "happiness was irrelevant," but she saves her sharpest remarks for her dissection of the Chilean sensibility, zestfully analyzing Chile's obsession with class, all-out machismo, habitual hypocrisy, intolerance, conservatism, clannishness, and gloominess. She claims that Chileans love bureaucracy, "states of emergency," funerals, and soap operas, and that, in the Chile of her youth, "intellectual scorn for women was absolute." Allende's conjuring of her "invented," or imaginatively remembered, country is riveting in its frankness and compassion, and her account of why and how she became a writer is profoundly moving. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)