For the first fiction entry in this series, I just had to choose my favourite modern author. Isabel Allende is an enchantress of words and a mistress of the story. Here is another part of her sporadic autobiography, this time about her life in the United States. This is presented as a sequel to Paula, the extraordinary, wrenching account of the long death of her eponymous daughter but is completely different in tone and scope.
The Sum of Our Days is a comedy of character and of life. If we are to believe her – and I am determined to do so – her life is as rich and as wild as her fiction. Allende’s candour about herself and her family is both shocking and delightful. Her relationship with her American husband and with her children and all the rest of her tribe is always totally over-the-top, passionate to the point of madness. Her self-criticism is comically transparent – she describes herself as the mother-in-law from hell and one can believe it, though it makes hell seem so attractive. Like her novels, every word transmits her unending joy, even, paradoxically, during paralysing depression, in being alive, in being a witness to the miracle of humanity, of individuality, of love. But above all, this book is extremely funny and there are moments which made me laugh till I wept.
Read this book if you need to feel good, really good, about the world and about people. Surely, right now, we all do.
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