Bookshop's review
My Invented Country: A Memoir by Isabel Allende
Yes, this is the Isabel Allende from the "House of Spirit" fame. She's a Chilean who has lived in various countries and is now calling the US home.
This is not a typical memoir as evidenced by the title: it is reminiscence of Chile, her country of birth as seen in her mind. There's no photograph of little Isabel in cute little dresses, there's no photograph of her ancestors in black and white. There's no statistics of Chile, no photographs of its landscape and people. Just richly detailed words describing her experience, her feelings, and her thoughts. I thought such description and memoir is quite different and interesting.
This is, to me, a very interesting book as I relate to a lot of her circumstances. I share her confusion of being a stranger in her own country yet unable to relate to any other countries that she's landed in. Amid all that, she reaffirms her identity as a Chilean.
For Indonesian or anyone in this kind of circumstances, I think this is a relevant...more
This is not a typical memoir as evidenced by the title: it is reminiscence of Chile, her country of birth as seen in her mind. There's no photograph of little Isabel in cute little dresses, there's no photograph of her ancestors in black and white. There's no statistics of Chile, no photographs of its landscape and people. Just richly detailed words describing her experience, her feelings, and her thoughts. I thought such description and memoir is quite different and interesting.
This is, to me, a very interesting book as I relate to a lot of her circumstances. I share her confusion of being a stranger in her own country yet unable to relate to any other countries that she's landed in. Amid all that, she reaffirms her identity as a Chilean.
For Indonesian or anyone in this kind of circumstances, I think this is a relevant...more
