For those who have read my reviews, then they know that I have mentioned that Isabel Allende is my favorite writer. Her most recent book, In the Midst of Winter, left a bad taste in my mouth because it was largely devoid of her magical realism that I love. Craving a book with magical realism but not knowing which author to turn to, I decided upon her only memoir which I had not yet read, My Invented Country. A journey that takes readers from Chile to California and back, Allende paints a picture of a proud country that revels in traditions, one that she is honored to be a part of.

Having previously read Allende's other memoirs, Paula and A Sum of Our Days, I was familiar with many of the stories of her youth. From her life as a diplomat's daughter living overseas to relishing the moments spent at her grandfather's side in the large house on the corner in Santiago, Allende's childhood was a chock full of stories, not without its share of controversy. In telling the story of her life, there is going to be overlap. Whereas in Paula as Allende tells a detailed story of family history to her daughter lying in a coma, My Invented Country briefly touches on the family while embellishing the country of Chile for all that it is famous for. We are regaled in the nation's history from its civil war with Peru and Bolivia in the 1880s up until the Pinochet years. In between, Allende calls Santiago the London of South America all the while giving instances of the idiosyncrasies that Chileans are famous for. The history and Chilean culture make appearances in her novels so these were not new to me; however, it was interesting to find out about the background research that goes into every novel that Allende writes. This makes me appreciate her all the more as an author.

As I read through Allende's memoirs, I find out more and more about her personal life. Readers discover that her first job was as a columnist in a new woman's magazine and as a television report on a comedy news show. This was in the 1970s and Allende was the token woman; her experiences lead her to the feminist leanings that she has had for her entire life. Once her family fled Chile for Venezuela during the 1973 coup d'etat which overthrew her uncle's presidency, she started to write novels. The basis for The House of the Spirits was a year long letter that Allende wrote to her grandfather back in Santiago as he lay dying. One year and over four hundred pages later, she completed the novel. It was in Venezuela that she got ideas and penned Eva Luna, Of Love and Shadows, and The Stories of Eva Luna. Each novel got ideas from her life and family history and written from the heart.

At age forty five, Allende immigrated to California, having married an American and receiving residency papers. For the last thirty years she has called both San Francisco and Chile home, traveling the world to promote and find ideas for her books. As an immigrant, Allende was almost immediately captivated by the early history of California, planting the seeds for her novels Daughter of Fortune and Portrait in Sepia, which make up a trilogy that ends with House of the Spirits. Allende sees many similarities between the terrain of San Francisco and Chile, making it easy for her to adapt to life in the United States, making her immigration almost seamless. She points out that had she met her husband in Indonesia that she would have moved there, believing in divine providence and that everything takes place at its proper appointed time. Yet, he is a proud Californian just as she is a proud Chilean, and she joined the millions of twentieth century immigrants who now call the United States home.

While I did not learn much new information by reading My Invented Country, I did glean how Allende is constantly finding new material for her novels. Writing with a nostalgia for the country of her youth while still being able to move between two countries, Allende has adapted to life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This memoir did not completely alleviate the sour taste I got in my mouth from reading her last novel; however, it did allow me to be privy to her soothing words that make me feel that she is an old friend or older family member. I am still craving a novel full of magical realism, but for now, My Invented Country more than suffices.

4+ stars

Invented Country, yes. But Nostalgic Journey Through Chile? Not really. My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile is more than anything else an autobiography of a life fragmented by years of exile due to the violence of the Pinochet regime. In addition, the (probably) murdered left-leaning ex-president, Salvador Allende Gossens, was a favorite relative of hers. Isabel Allende's Chile is primarily in her heart.

Her first book, House of the Spirits, was written while she was living in Venezuela, about which she writes:

If someone had asked what it was about, I would have said that it was an attempt to recapture my lost country, to reunite my scattered family, to revive the dead and preserve their memories, which were beginning to be blown away in the whirlwind of exile.

Curiously, this is a very exact description also of My Invented Country.

I had hoped to read some background about Chile for a projected trip later this year. Reading it, I found ou a whole lot about the author, but only a few scattered tidbits about the country as a whole.

La escritura es tipo casual. En donde no hay una línea de tiempo, sino que puede saltar de un tema a otro.

Bueno para nuevos lectores de Isabel Allende, porque los que hemos leído varios libros de ella, sobre todo La casa de los espíritus, probablemente conozcamos la mayoría de lo aquí escrito.

Ενα υπέροχο βιβλίο απο την Αλιέντε. Μαθαίνουμε για την ζωή της σε διάφορες χώρες, τα βιώματα της, γενικά για την ζωή της. Επίσης, για την πατρίδα την Χιλή που τόσο αγαπά και δεν ξεχνά με νοσταλγία!! Το λάτρεψα!!!!

مراجعة وتقييم

This book is a memoir and a bit of an autobiography of the author, Isabel Allende. In addition to pieces of her story and her family’s story we get a bit of geography of the country, ranging from absolute desert in the north to forested ski country in the south.



We get a mini-history of the country, which Allende knows well since at least one of her books, Ines of My Soul, is a fictionalized biography of a real historical figure in 16th century Chile, Ines de Suarez.

She tells us a bit about the indigenous peoples, the Mapuches and the Aymaras, both groups displaced and slaughtered by the Spanish and their descendants remain discriminated against today.

In several places the author attempts to tell us about the Chilean national character. Family oriented but pessimistic and moody… etc. Maybe that’s why so many Chileans become poets (Pablo Neruda)? LOL. As a professional geographer, I just have to be skeptical about any descriptions of national character. “Italians are very …. Portuguese people are always …..” Is anybody not ‘family-oriented?’

We get a lot more about Chilean politics since the 1970’s when Salvador Allende, a democratically elected leftist president, was overthrown in a military coup encouraged by the CIA, afraid that Chile would ‘become another Cuba.’ A military dictatorship ensued until 1990. And, yes, they were related. President Allende was a first cousin of Isabel’s biological (but absent) father.

As the author tells us, those political events changed her life. She was a journalist and her outspoken reporting resulted in death threats to her and her family, so she moved to Venezuela before she could be ‘disappeared’ by the military thugs. After ten years in Venezuela, Isabel moved to the US, married an American man, and became an American citizen.

Isabel was actually born in Peru but moved at a young age to Chile. She never knew her father who left home when she was three. (Catholic Chile did not allow divorce in those days, so he remained her legal father.) She heard so much about the sprawling house of her grandparents, where many of their children and grandchildren lived, it assumed mythic proportions in her mind and became material for her first novel, the one she remains most famous for, The House of the Spirits. This book has almost a quarter-million ratings on GR and 11,000 reviews. Isabel has been called "the world's most widely read Spanish-language author."

Other events in her life are tied to her books. Isabel had a daughter who died of a genetic disease just before she turned 30. That death, mentioned only in passing in this book, became the basis for her novel, Paula.

It’s always fascinating to me to find connections among books. My previous review was of It Would be Night in Caracas by Karin Sainz Borgo, about the disintegration of the nation of Venezuela. In that book, that author talks a bit about the influx of immigrants into Caracas when Venezuela was growing and prosperous with oil money. She tells us that many of these immigrants were fleeing military dictatorships in other Latin American counties, especially Chile. Borgo doesn’t mention Isabel by name, but obviously Isabel was one of those immigrants. And later in the Caracas story, the main character moves into an abandoned apartment and finds three books – one is The House of the Spirits!



Map from besthotelshome.com
The author from ft.com

"Don't believe everything that I say: I tend to exaggerate and, as I warned in the beginning, I can't be objective where Chile is concerned."
.
From MY INVENTED COUNTRY: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile, by Isabel Allende, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden, 2003.

My first Allende. Not sure if this was a good place to start. Definitely gives some context for her novels.

Imagine a dinner with an older and very opinionated relative you haven't seen for a long time. You listen to them talk [a lot] about everything under the sun. Some things sad, others funny - eccentric family members, who left their spouse, who had a child out of wedlock... Some of it you've heard before, some of it new and juicy gossip. Some truth bombs, some call-outs. Some mildly racist and/or un-PC comments (*shhh! Please don't say that, Tía Isabel!*)

Sono stata in Chile per ben due volte: la prima volta nel 2019 per quasi 5 mesi e la seconda nel 2020 per 6 mesi. Questo libro mi ha fatto rivivere i miei 11 mesi di soggiorno cileno. Isabel Allende forse marca un po’ i tratti dei suoi connazionali, tant’è che il mio compagno, dopo avergli letto alcuni passaggi, si è impermalosito. Siccome la Allende dice che il cileno è permaloso, a voi la conclusione.

Mi è piaciuto tantissimo, per questo le 5 stelle, soprattutto perché ho potuto conoscere una parte di storia che i cileni cercano di omettere e di cui non parlano proprio: la dittatura, che ha reso questo popolo ancora più ospitale e solidale.
Lettura che incuriosisce, che tiene alta l’attenzione, ironica e in un certo senso tragicomica. È stata una lettura piacevole che mi ha riportato alla mente tanti ricordi.

Mi país inventando es un libro dónde Isabel Allende como migrante nos cuenta como ve a Chile desde fuera, toda su historia y todo lo que ha pasado .

Como cuando escribio el libro ya siente que su hogar es San Francisco más que Chile, algo que nos pasa a todos los que migramos de dónde nacimos y crecimos.

I don't know how interested I would be in this book had I not lived in Chile for several months. However, since I have, I found it endearing and hilarious, especially when I read a few gems that I though my sister might appreciate.

"...on my last trip I found to my amazement that coffee had finally made its entrance into culture and now anyone willing to pay can find espressos and cappuccinos worthy of Italy."

Isabel, really? This book was published about 8 years ago but still in 2009, when I ordered a cappuccino, it arrived with not a cap of frothed milk, but whipped cream. I'm sorry, you are full of it.

Also this.

"...for peace of mind of potential tourists, impeccable public bathrooms and bottled water are readily available everywhere."

Impeccable? Lady please, after a few months in Chile, I thought it was hitting the jackpot if there was actually a door, a toilet seat or toilet paper. Not all three, just one of the three was enough to make me feel lucky. And that bottled water is available everywhere, well, I would like her to qualify the word "everywhere" as well as ask her to tell me where to find this water while driving from Ovalle to Vicuna because I have never been so dehydrated in my life.

Finally, she quotes someone as saying "The country lives in organized disorder," which I wholeheartedly agree with. All that said, I enjoyed her nostalgic journey through Chile quite a bit.

Isabel Allende has written a memior of herself, her family, her first society, and her country of birth, Chile. Ms Allende mostly loves in San Francisco with her beloved, however imperfect, husband.
As usual, Allende spells things out. In part, she speaks of the political dramas post WWII, of her country of birth. Speaking of how President (General) Pincochet was elected, she says: "It is a fact that information was censored and brainwashing was the goal of a vigorous propaganda machine; it is also true that the opposition lost many years and a lot of blood before it got organized." She speaks 0f fear of the citizens and their love of authority. Sounds a lot like how Mr Trump will soon be Mr President. I hope the opposition will organize these 4 years so that we can have a real president elected next time.
This memior provides political lessons, insights, cultural expansion, worldview expansion, in fewer than 200 pages, I suggest this book to all who are interested in South American history or culture.

,,Așa pățesc cu multe întâmplări și povești din viața mea, pe care mi se pare că le-am trăit, dar de cum le aștern în scris și le confrunt cu logica mi se par improbabile, deși problema nu mă neliniștește. Ce importanță are dacă s-au întâmplat sau doar le-am imaginat? Oricum, viața e vis."