The set up of the text is simple – Allende writes to Paula, writes about writing to Paula, and as Paula’s condition slowly deteriorates, she writes less to the bodily Paula prostate on a bed, and more to the memory and the image of the woman when she was healthy. BUT as the product of a fascinating and (often strange) family, she also had a wealth of personal and reported anecdotes to fill her memoir with the full gamut of human experience.
And as a journalist and TV presenter in democratic Chile in the 70s, she had access too to a varied range of exciting experiences. Meaning that Paula’s mother was in close proximity to some significant modern history. Her uncle, Salvador Allende, was the President of Chile murdered and deposed by the coup leading to General Pinochet’s dictatorship. With little knowledge of how long it would last and how damaged her child would be the other side, Allende began to write her a letter that would serve to remind her of the history of her family. In December 1991 Isabel Allende’s daughter Paula fell into a coma.
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