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The Sum of Our Days: Book summary and reviews of The Sum of Our Days by Isabel Allende

The Sum of Our Days

The Sum of Our Days
A Memoir
by Isabel Allende
Published in USA Apr 2008,
320 pages.

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The Sum of Our Days Summary

In this heartfelt memoir, Isabel Allende reconstructs the painful reality of her own life in the wake of tragic loss—the death of her daughter, Paula. Recalling the past thirteen years from the daily letters the author and her mother, who lives in Chile, wrote to each other, Allende bares her soul in a book that is as exuberant and full of life as its creator. She recounts the stories of the wildly eccentric, strong-minded, and eclectic tribe she gathers around her that becomes a new kind of family.

Throughout, Allende shares her thoughts on love, marriage, motherhood, spirituality and religion, infidelity, addiction, and memory. Here, too, are the amazing stories behind Allende’s books, the superstitions that guide her writing process, and her adventurous travels. Ultimately, The Sum of Our Days offers a unique tour of this gifted writer’s inner world and of the relationships that have become essential to her life and her work.

Narrated with warmth, humor, exceptional candor, and wisdom, The Sum of Our Days is a portrait of a contemporary family, bound together by the love, fierce loyalty, and stubborn determination of a beloved, indomitable matriarch.

The Sum of Our Days Reviews

"Starred Review. In this deeply revealing second memoir, after Paula, novelist Allende utilizes her family and the complex network of their relationships as the linchpin of the narrative .. This is a book to savor." - Publishers Weekly.

"A turbulent life to be both pitied and envied, and a book to be savored and reread." - Kirkus Reviews.

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The Sum of Our Days Reader Reviews

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Rated 5 of 5 of 5 by Jill Aldrovandi
Champion of truth
Loved this book, especially that Isabel sends herself up continuously and hilariously. She loves women and men equally (albeit an ardent feminist) and champions all in her quest for family (in the widest all-connecting way) and harmony. During her quest she falls into many a pit and has to crawl up and out and this ensures and compounds her humanity and realness - we can all relate to the frailties, foibles and strengths she talks about and exhibits (her own and others).

Isabel Allende Author Biography

Isabel Allende Llona (born in Lima, Peru, on 2 August 1942) is a Chilean writer with American citizenship. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the "magic realist" tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus, 1982) and City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias, 2002), which have been commercially successful. Allende has been called "the world's most widely read Spanish-language author". In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010, she received Chile's National Literature Prize.

Allende's novels are often based upon her personal experience and pay homage to the lives of women, while weaving together elements of myth...

... Full Biography
Author Interview

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