Discovering a new favourite writer-Isabel Allende

I'm choosing carefully my favorite writers, and I prefer usually to read several works before listing him/her as one of my favorites, but it seems that I just picked up the right novel from Isabel Allende. However, I'm sure that very soon i will read more from her works as with the first one my attention was captivated and I can state that she is a great novelist. This feminist writer is from Chile, but living nowadays in California, had an interesting and adventurous life, she is a wife, mother, grandmother, friend and last but not least a successful, bestselling author. According to her, in every novel she is exploring a part of herself, in every story lies something more or less from her life or her personality.

I have just finished her novel entitled 'The Sum of Our Days' and it had a great impact on me. Isabel Allende has the gift to tell some facts which will become personal for the reader, will make him/her to think, to see life with different eyes and to be more grateful for what he/she has. This impressive memoir presents her family, each member having a very complex personality, sometimes even scandalous, though they are a great team, a 'tribe', as the writer defines it.
The narrative is very vivacious, giving an insight to the sorrows and joys of this unique family. It presents different moments of their lives, being very much concentrated on the pain of losing the beloved Paula, Isabel's daughter, to whom she is addressing directly in the novel very often. Sometimes it seems as a letter to Paula, telling what happened after her departure.

'The Sum of Our Days' is not a good memoir to read, it is an example of how to go on in life after a big loss, how to remember and have the memory of the beloved dead person with you every day without feeling pain, but acceptance, it is an experience of life. She writes about love, death, spiritualism, drug addiction and other aspects of life without making judgement, but making to reflect. Reading this novel wasn't just a lecture, it was an experience, and my next acquisition will be Isabel's novel 'Paula', written in the memory of her dead daughter, because I'm sure that she has very much more to offer with every novel, and especially with the memoir of her daughter.

A captivating novel - The Aviary Gate

      I read this novel two years ago, after I discovered it in the small town-library from Beaconsfield. It catches my eyes and as I saw in the short presentation from the cover of the book that it is based on Oriental historical events, I took it immediately. It was a very good decision, because even after two years I consider it a great book, and I recommend it. One of my friends mentioned that she is reading it and it is a wonderful lecture, so I decided to write down some ideas, because it would be a waste to lose them.
      The novel is structured in two stories, on different temporal, spacial levels and of different cultural backgrounds. It gives an insight to the exotic and mysterious world of the sultan's harem in Istanbul from the year 1599, but also in the dilemmas of the modern life in England. Both stories are built around two female characters, who lived in different epochs, different cultures, one represents the woman of the past and the other is the example of the contemporary woman,  and had totally different fates, but the narrative brings their lives very close at a certain moment.
      Reading this novel is like a constant travel in time. The temporal contrast is very well accentuated by the two women, Celia and Elisabeth. Curiously, their characters are not realized with the same intensity. We will discover a well-built and tragic character in Celia, but Elisabet's characterization is fade, indirect, the reader has to discover independent her personality. Celia's story dominates the narrative, Elisabet's is quite sketchy, spiced with romance.The differences won't stop here. Istanbul, the city has an important role in the lives of these women. For Celia it means slavery and she will find her tragic end there, but for Elisabeth it is a place for escape, for discovery and romance.
      After a shocking beginning, the book captivates the attention providing interesting details from the Oriental world and culture. We get a vivid picture of the seclusion of the harem, giving the impression of realism. The reader enters to a forbidden place, where almost nobody had access. It is a mysterious place webbed with intrigues, gossip, drama, hopelessness and betray.
      'The Aviary Gate is an impressing, captivating novel, which offers an exquisite travel in time, space and culture.