La suma de los días (The Sum of Our Days)

By staff -- Críticas, 12/15/2007

In this collection of autobiographical vignettes, narrated to her deceased but ever-present daughter Paula, best-selling Allende reveals the magical-religious cosmovision that enables her to perceive synchronicities, delight in the miracles in daily life, and commune with the spirits who guide the way. The events in her life have provided a rich backstory to the books she has written over the past decade, and their depiction here reveals why her characters are passionate, adventuresome women motivated by love rather than ambition as they reject society’s confines: they reflect parts of her. Fans who recognize Allende’s family members from My Invented Country and Paula will be pleased with the opportunity to meet them again. Those who know only her novels must persevere through heartrending accounts of tribulations and a few gems of magical realism in the first half to be rewarded by the lyrical second part of the book, in which the various conflicts find a kind of resolution as the members of her clan are enveloped in the unconditional and all-encompassing love of Allende’s matriarchy. We are left longing for Allende to add us to her tribe. Recommended for public libraries and bookstores.—Carolyn Kost, Stevenson Sch. Lib., Pebble Beach, CA