Paula

Registered by Fire-Dragon of Newtown, New South Wales Australia on 1/15/2004
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3 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by Fire-Dragon from Newtown, New South Wales Australia on Thursday, January 15, 2004
In December 1991, Isabel Allende's daughter Paula, aged 28, fell gravely ill and sank into a coma.

This is Allende's memoir of the vigil at her daughter's bedside and the tales she tells Paul of her own life in Peru, Chile, Venezuela and the US.

Anyone who has enjoyed Allende's fiction should enjoy this tender and moving memoir.

Journal Entry 2 by Fire-Dragon from Newtown, New South Wales Australia on Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Posted to Futurecat in New Zealand via Casualreader's book relay site.

Journal Entry 3 by futurecat from Christchurch, Canterbury New Zealand on Thursday, January 29, 2004
Arrived safely in New Zealand today. Looking forward to reading it.

Thanks, Fire-Dragon!

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Journal Entry 4 by futurecat from Christchurch, Canterbury New Zealand on Saturday, February 7, 2004
What an incredible book! It took me a while to get used to Allende's writing style, and to the seriously long paragraphs she uses, but once I did I was totally hooked. It begins as a letter written to her daughter, relating the family's history in case Paula has forgotten anything when she comes out of the coma. As the book progresses, and it becomes more and more apparent that Paula will not recover (sorry, minor spoiler there, but it's no more than is given away by the cover blurbs), she continues writing for its cathartic release, telling the story of her own life along with documenting the end of Paula's. What results is a deeply moving and intensely personal memoir (so much so that I was almost surprised she chose to publish it), but also a fascinating history of the lead up to and repercussions of Chile's own September 11.

I think ORNOT wants to read this next (or at least add it to his ever-growing TBR pile...)

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Journal Entry 5 by ORNOT from Christchurch, Canterbury New Zealand on Tuesday, February 10, 2004
The fools have asked me, once again, what was my experience with the book?

There's not a lot you can say to that. Not when you don't know who's going to read this entry. Some small children in Angola might end up asking their parents some very awkward questions, like, "What's a dust jacket?" or "Why are they called paper cuts when it isn't the paper that gets cut?" - except in the local language, obviously: Flemish, for those who don't know.

I nabbed this book because I'd had a good time with its predecessor, "The House of Spirits", a book which we are reminded of by the cover on this book, which says: "the new international bestseller from the author of "The House of Spirits." Good of them to narrow it down for me. I'd hate to pick a book because I was interested in it for its own sake, or out of some dangerous devil may care attitude, without some connection to something that had gone before, some past history, some safe, nice experience that meant I wasn't taking any risk whatsoever. That would be dreadful! How niave would that be? That would just be asking for trouble, wouldn't it? If it doesn't get a vote from Oprah or The New York Times best seller list then, well, it's not for me. I have nothing against those books that haven't been vetted for me by "experts", you understand, I just wouldn't want to see any of my books snuggled up to one in a book-cafe.

So I grabbed this one, and will read it, eventually. When Cosmo' suggests it's a good time to.

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