"Here was this gringo guy who liked tall blondes. Allende's first novel in 1982, The House of the Spirits, which chronicled four generations of a Chilean family, garnered international acclaim, as did her eight subsequent works, including Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, Paula, and Daughter of Fortune.ĭivorced in the late 1980s, Allende met Willie Gordon, the California attorney who would become her second husband, while on a book tour. The family tumult and political drama of her native country, infused with a haunting spiritualism, became the hallmarks of her writing. Then, in the early seventies, she and her family were forced to abruptly flee the country and spend years in exile after a military coup deposed her uncle, Chilean President Salvador Allende. Born in 1942 in Chile to a prominent family, she enjoyed a successful career as a journalist, author and playwright. All three of Allende's grandchildren (aged eleven, nine and eight) live a short distance from her iīut, Allende has always lived a somewhat public life. But, the book's protagonist, Alexander Cold, is based on a real person, Allende's oldest grandson, Alejandro.
The two travel to the Amazon, on a quest to find a legendary creature, known as "the beast." Along the way, the boy gains an inner strength he never knew he had and the grandmother watches the transformation of her beloved grandson with admiration.Īllende, who researched the book by taking a boat ride up the Amazon, says the eccentric grandma in the book is not at all like her. In City of Beasts, a teenage boy, whose mother falls ill, finds himself on an adventure with his thrill-seeking grandmother, a reporter for an international geographic magazine. And, most revealing of all, the unexpected freedoms of life at 60. Being a storyteller, Allende also wove in tales of her own extraordinary life: of her enduring Latin American roots, which continue to inspire her though she has lived in California the past 15 years of her adored grandchildren, who "commissioned" her to write City of Beasts. The acclaimed author recently met with AARP Segunda Juventud at her home in Sausalito, California, to talk about her new novel for young adults, City of Beasts. Rather, a journey of the heart, filled with brutal truths, exhilarating passions, and the wisdom that comes from accepting, in Allende's words, that "we have very little control over our lives."
En español | To chat with Isabelle Allende is to take a journey, though not in the literal sense.
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