Very few couples survive the death of one child, let alone three.”
Between him and me, we have lost three children. He went inward and cut everybody off, me included. “When his youngest son died three years ago he just lost interest in everything. Don't give me your condolences – it has been really good to end that marriage Gordon’s three adult children from a previous relationship were drug addicts, however, and two died from overdoses. She advised Gordon, a lawyer-turned-novelist, on his writing, and soaked up the beauty of Marin county. There she pursued journalism, separated from her first husband and wrote her debut novel, The House of the Spirits, inspired by memories of her grandfather’s house.īy the time Allende settled with Gordon in California in 1989 she was on her way to becoming one of the world’s most widely read Spanish-language authors an award-winning phenomenon, her books were translated into more than 30 languages. After Augusto Pinochet toppled Salvador Allende in a bloody 1973 coup, the young Isabel, a first cousin once removed of the fallen president, fled to exile in Venezuela. Abandoned by her father at the age of three, she moved around South America with her mother and stepfather, a Chilean diplomat, before the family returned to Santiago. Her devotees write to her in droves, sharing their own stories and seeking counsel.īetween sips of tea, Allende is affable and energetic as she discusses her tumultuous life odyssey. Mega-bestsellers such as Inés of My Soul, City of the Beasts and Paula, a memoir about her daughter who died in 1992 after a porphyria-induced coma, have proven Allende’s ability to plumb the human heart, and channel narratives flecked with magical realism. She wrote it as her marriage to Gordon crumbled, freighting the story with a painful acceptance that few experience true, lasting love. A multigenerational epic of love lost and found, it sweeps from present-day San Francisco to the Nazi invasion of Poland to Pearl Harbor and the herding of people of Japanese descent into US internment camps. Photograph: Felipe Amilibia/AFP/Getty ImagesĬhic in black boots and skirt and embroidered jacket, Allende is at the tail-end of a two-month European and US tour to promote her latest book, The Japanese Lover. Isabel Allende in Caracas, Venezuela, 1985.
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