Allende started the book as a letter to Paula, explaining what she was missing so she would not be confused when she recovered. Isabel Allende wrote Paula while tending to her daughter, Paula Frías Allende, who was in a coma arising from complications of porphyria. But the book is a tribute to her deceased daughter Paula Frías Allende, who fell into a porphyria-induced coma in 1991 and never recovered. She intended to write a straightforward narrative about the darkest experience of her own life. But I was full of love and that love keeps growing and multiplying and giving fruit.Paula is a 1994 memoir by Isabel Allende. She could not respond in any way, her eyes were somber pools that reflected no light.

I don't even know if she was able to receive that love. But then I realized I still had the love I had given her.

When she died I thought I had lost everything. During her illness I had to let go of everything: her laughter, her voice, her grace, her beauty, her company and finally her spirit. When she died she had nothing and she needed nothing. She never had any money, but she needed very little. She worked as a volunteer helping women and children, eight hours a day, six days a week. It's by spending yourself that you become rich. Paralyzed and silent in her bed, my daughter Paula taught me a lesson that is now my mantra: You only have what you give. I still lust for life, I am still ferociously independent, I still crave justice and I fall madly in love easily. I have not changed, I am still the same girl I was fifty years ago, and the same young woman I was in the seventies. I discovered that there is consistency in my beliefs, my writing and the way I lead my life. However, that year also gave an opportunity to reflect upon my journey and the principles that hold me together. There was nothing to do - just cry and remember. Her most recent books include Zorro: A Novel and the final installment in her celebrated children's trilogy, Forest of the Pygmies.ĭuring that year of agony and the following year of my grieving, everything stopped for me. Allende has written more than a dozen novels, including The House of the Spirits and My Invented Country. When her uncle, Chilean President Salvador Allende, was assassinated in 1973, she fled with her husband and children to Venezuela. Novelist Isabel Allende was born in Peru and raised in Chile.

Isabel allende daughter paula