Isabel Allende - A Life Of Extremes

Novelist Isabel Allende talks to Agenda about her ability to adapt in order to survive. Like her characters Allende speaks from the heart. She is a passionate woman who has recreated herself many times and, in the process, has led an extraordinary life.

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Since fleeing Chile in the early 1970s, Isabel Allende has, in her own words, 'reinvented myself several times.' She uses her writing as a means of expressing herself and has written about subjects as diverse as food, sex and state sponsored terroism.

Whilst she still loves her homeland of Chile, she knew that she had to leave it. She explains,

'At that time, the situation was unbearable. I felt very threatened and I felt that the circle of repression was closing around my neck.'

During her enforced exile in Venezuela, Allende begain to write. During that time she has learnt to draw on her personal experiences, both past and present, and claims that had she not been forced to leave Chile she may never have written.

Childhood

In her youth Allende led the typical nomadic life of a diplomat's child and soon realised that 'roots are not in landscape or a country, or a people, they are inside you.'

Born in Lima, Peru during World War II, her father worked for the Chilean embassy. When he absconded in 1945, Allende was just three years old and her family had no idea where he had gone to. Now believing that he was bisexual and was probably involved in a scandal, Allende didn't see him again until many years later when he collapsed and died in the street and she was called to identify the body. Her mother later remarried, again to a diplomat, and the family went where his work took him.

Marriage

At the age of 19 Allende married an Anglo-Chilean engineer, their marriage lasted 25 years despite her claims that she married him not for love, but because he was the only man to have asked her. In interview she has claimed that she did everything for her husband and served him, 'like a geisha'.

Despite her uncharacteristic subserviance, they led a seemingly happy and fulfilled existence in Santiago, Chile. Allende worked as a presenter of her own television show whilst raising her two children Nicolas and Paula.

Fleeing The Coup
In September 1973, President Salvador Allende, her father's cousin, and Chile's first Marxist leader, died during a military coup. General Pinochet came to power and Allende's world began to change, she explains:

	I lived for a year and a half under Pinochet's rule

Allende fled to Venezuela. She never thought her exile would be forever, but military rule in Chile lasted for 17 years. When Pinochet was finally arrested, Allende was still in exile. Her feelings during the time of Pinochets arrest are clear:

'A weight was lifted from the Chilean society and in that time a space was created for the truth to be known. For the first time we discussed what had happened which was an amazing achievement. From then on everything else that happened was a bonus.'

Although her time away from Chile was enforced she recognises that without it, she may never have become a writer. In a recent interview she claimed that writing helped her to break 'the chain of hatred in my soul'.

Living In America In 1988, Allende met and quickly fell in love with her second husband. She currently resides in San Francisco where she has once again adapted to a change in culture. She attributes her ability to blend in with different people to having an open mind. She explains: 'I have travelled all over the world and one thing that amazes me is that I can communicate with people. My story may be different but emotionally we are all the same. I tend to see the similarities in people and not the differences.' Writing As A Life-Line Allende's work as a journalist gave her the skills to create characters and develop stories - standing her in good stead as a novelist, but not necessarily as an impartial journalist. In interview she claimed, 'I was a lousy journalist. I could never be objective. Sometimes I invented the whole story. When I met the great poet Pablo Neruda, he said "you are the worst journalist in this country. You lie all of the time. Why don't you switch to literature".' Since then the written word has helped Allende through some difficult times and she has often used storytelling as a way of exorcising her soul. 'Pablo Neruda said "you are the worst journalist in this country. You lie all of the time. Why don't you switch to literature".' Her first novel The House Of Spirits (1982) began life as a letter to her grandparents and drew on her memories of childhood. Later, following the death of her daughter, she wrote Paula (1999). In this instance writing became more than therapy: 'I always thought that when she died that my life wouldn't have any sense anymore and I had been saving sleeping pills for this purpose. When she did die, I realised that I had to write what had happened and for a year I wrote a memoir called Paula and that saved me… it is not a sad book. I realised that in choosing the adjectives you can decide the tone of the paragraph, the tone of the event and eventually the tone of your own life. So if you change the way you tell your own story you can change the colour and create a life in technicolour.'