Isabel Allende Talks Writing, Hope, and the Influence of Family

Goodreads: Thank you for writing this incredible book, Violeta. I’m intrigued that you also published a memoir earlier this year.

Isabel Allende: I have nothing else to do but write since the pandemic hit. I'm at home, I don't travel anywhere. I have a lovely husband who doesn't bother me at all. I actually finished another book that will probably be published in 2023. I'm rushing before I die. 

GR: I hope you have decades of writing left. 

IA: No, my dear, I will be 80 next year.

GR: I know, but I also know that your family has a history of longevity.  

IA: [Laughs.] We'll see. 


GR: So why did you start writing Violeta? 

IA: My parents died two and a half years ago, and they were very old. My stepfather was 102 and my mother was 98. I was very, very close to my mom. We wrote to each other every day for decades, and I saved all the letters. I have 24,000 letters in boxes. When she died, many people said that I should write about our extraordinary relationship. 

And I really tried! But my mother was an extraordinary woman who did not have an extraordinary life. She was dependent, submissive—not emotionally—but economically. She was a very good artist and never became the great artist that she could have been because she was the wife of a diplomat. It was more important to set the table nicely, to dress nicely. What interested me was the fact that my mother lived almost a century—a very interesting and important century where we had two world wars—and she lived in Chile, where there was the dictatorship. So the goal of the book was, of course, Violeta's life, but also to address the times that she lived. 

GR:  I noticed you never state specifically which country Violeta is set in. What was the reasoning behind that?

IA: I did the same thing with my [first three novels] because that gives me freedom. I can really think of a country, but by not mentioning it, I can move dates around. For example, if the earthquake was in 1906, I can move it to 1908. But if I mention the country, then I have to be very, very accurate with historical facts and the geography, too. So I invent. I change the names of towns, and I don't mention the country. Sometimes my translators get confused and they think it's Chile. They text me that I made a mistake with a date and I say, "What are you talking about? It doesn't say it's Chile, does it?"

GR: The character of Nieves will feel familiar to readers of your memoir The Sum of Our Days, and I noticed in the acknowledgements that she is based on a real person. There have been some popular stories in the past year debating how closely writers can draw from real life, and I’m curious how you think about this. 

IA: It depends. If I'm writing a memoir, I show the manuscript once it’s translated to everybody whose names are in the book. I see if they approve or not. I very seldom change things, but I can take out someone who doesn't feel that he or she has been portrayed accurately or in a good light. And I have done that. 

But, in my opinion, if you write fiction, you can do whatever you want. When I wrote The House of the Spirits, all my family was in there. With a family like mine, you don't need to invent anything. It's full of crazy lunatics—perfect characters for a novel. 

The character of the patriarch is based on my grandfather, but my grandfather was not a rapist or a criminal. My grandfather was a wonderful man, but the character—his temperament, his beliefs, the way he led his life—was very similar to the patriarch. 

Fortunately, my grandfather didn't have a chance to read the book because he died before it was finished, but some relatives got very angry because they saw themselves in the book, although their names are not there. Many of them wouldn't speak to me for years. Then the movie The House of the Spirits came out, and then the portraits of Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons were on everybody's pianos. That's the official story of the family now. See? Things change. You allow enough time, and things change.

GR: Speaking of The House of the Spirits… I know this was discussed when the movie came out in the ’90s, but in 2021, it’s interesting that the novel was famously set in South America, yet it was essentially a Scandinavian film—  

IA: Yeah, that was a problem.

GR: —with white actors. 

IA: And spoken in English.

GR: How do you think about that these days? 

IA: Well, in 1995, you could not have a commercial movie that was not in English. Also, if you didn't have stars like Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons, it would be much more difficult for the movie to be really successful. The cast was incredible. But it was spoken in English, filmed in Portugal and in Denmark, with a Danish director, and German money. So it had not at all a Latin American flavor. 

When their option expired 20 years later, in 2015, I started getting requests for a new movie, and now [Hulu] is going to make a miniseries. I think it's ten episodes directed by two Latin American women, with a Latin American cast, filmed in Latin America. It’s a completely different approach. But it's another time, right?

GR: It is a different time. Switching gears a bit, in your newest memoir, The Soul of a Woman, you said that you didn't start writing fiction until you were almost 40 because you doubted your ability and your talent. What changed for you? How did you suddenly think, “I can do this.” 

IA:  I didn't think, “I can do this.” I started writing out of despair. I was living in Venezuela, in exile for many years. I was a school administrator. I had been a journalist before, and I had all these stories accumulated inside. I was sick with nostalgia and sort of paralyzed because I was middle-aged and my marriage was collapsing. My children were going to university and didn't need me anymore. My life had no direction. I hadn't done anything that I could be proud of. 

And then I got a phone call that my grandfather, whom I adored because I had grown up in his house, was dying in Chile and I could not go back to say goodbye to him. So I started writing a letter for him that very quickly, I realized, was not a normal letter and that my grandfather was never going to read it. So I felt free to just write, write, write. I mean, I didn't even know that it was a novel—I thought it was sort of a memoir. Then I started changing names because I didn't want to offend anybody. 

And eventually, after a year of writing at night, I had 560 pages on the kitchen counter in the apartment in Caracas, and that was the book The House of the Spirits. But it happened by chance. I didn't feel that I was a writer. I didn't sit down and say, “I'm going to write a novel.” 

GR: It's interesting how so often for artists the impetus is some element of pain or despair, as you said.

IA: It's hard to write from happiness. [Laughs.] But right now I’m at a very good stage in my life. I don't have to take care of anybody. I took care of my parents for many, many years. I took care of my children and my grandchildren. Now, all I have to do is enjoy life. I am recently married to a very kind man who makes everything easy for me. And I feel that from this point of peace and happiness, I'm still creative. I don't need to be unhappy or desperate to write.

GR: You famously begin all your books on January 8. Was that true for Violeta? 

IA: Yes. Always on January 8. I think that if I start on any other day, it's bad luck. 

GR: How has your process evolved in the decades you’ve been writing?  

IA: I'm always very insecure. I am afraid. Will it happen? Will I be able to write this book? It takes two, three weeks, or sometimes a month, to get the tone, to get the rhythm, to get the book running, and the characters come to life. I never know how it's going to end. 

Two things I have learned in these 40 years of writing: One is that I have to show up. If I show up in front of my computer with discipline, the muse will eventually come. So it's more showing up than anything in this job. Then I've learned that I can research, so I don't have to trust just my imagination. 

GR: You published two books in the past year alone, and you finished another novel. How do you prioritize all these different projects? 

IA: One at a time. I never have two things at the same time. Once I have finished something, I can start thinking of the next thing.

GR: What are you reading these days?

IA: I just finished a book called The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason. It’s a beautiful book, and I was not aware of it until Adam Hochschild sent me a text and said, “You have to read this immediately.” I trust him blindly, so I immediately went to my Kindle. I'm also reading Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. I am two-thirds through. It's very long and fascinating. 

GR: For anyone reading this interview who’d like to be a novelist someday, what advice would you give them? 

IA: The best advice I can give I heard from Elizabeth Gilbert. She said, “Don't expect your writing to give you fame or money. Write because you love the process.” And I would add to that: Don't even expect to be published. Just plunge into the writing because you love it. And that gives you the energy to write. If you are thinking that you're going to be famous, you are already in a straitjacket. The other thing that I already said is: You have to show up. I mean, if you don't show up for the writing and the reading, you are never going to be a writer. It doesn't happen by chance. No one writes the Great American Novel in one sitting. That doesn't happen, right? 

GR:  It’s true. I have to ask because you have lived all over the world in different stages of peace and turmoil. Have the past few years surprised you? 

IA:  Yes. It’s as if the pandemic ended inhibitions and the worst—and the best—have come up. There's rage in the air. It's not only in the United States. For example, it's happening in Chile right now. Of course, Trump didn't make anything easier. He exacerbated it, but he exacerbated what was already there.

GR: I've often wondered if it's social media as well that makes it possible for intense emotions to be shared so quickly. 

IA: The speed is the social media, but this has happened before. Because I study history so much for my books, I'm not surprised. I mean, how do revolutions and change happen? They all start with anger. They start with chaos, with confrontation, with violence.

GR: That's a good point. Do you feel optimistic? 

IA: I am optimistic because I don't think the world will end right now. It will eventually, but not right now. I think that the world is better today, in spite of everything, than the world I was born in. I was born in the middle of the Second World War, in times of the Holocaust. Today, the fear is climate change. Then the fear was an atomic holocaust. But we live in fear, always. And it shouldn't be like this. I blame the patriarchy, of course. 

GR: But you've seen a lot of change in that regard, I would think. 

IA: Not enough. And given the wrong circumstances, we go back and women lose all their rights. Look what happened in Afghanistan. In 24 hours, the Taliban takes over and women go back to the burka inside their homes. 

GR: It's incredible how different it is to be born there versus to be born, say, a little girl in California. Not to say that all children in California have the same experiences. 

IA: Of course! It all depends on where you are born. It's by chance that you and I are talking right now. We could be carrying water in some village in Africa. I mean, we are all born with a set of cards: race, gender, the time when we are born, if we are healthy or not, the kind of family that we have, the kind of surroundings that we have. We have to play our game the best we can, but we cannot change the cards. 

GR: You have been so generous with your time. Thank you. 

IA: Oh please, it's been a pleasure. 

GR: Before I let you go, is there anything that I didn't ask you that you wanted to discuss? 

IA: This is just an anecdote, but I was interviewed recently by a journalist from the U.K., and he said, “Did you intentionally write Violeta like The House of the Spirits? Because The House of the Spirits started as a letter from the granddaughter to the grandfather. And this book is a letter from the grandmother to the grandson.” 

Well, I hadn't made that connection at all! But I didn't do it on purpose. It’s interesting how other people see in the text what sometimes the author has no idea is in there. 

GR: I can imagine that it's illuminating and—

IA: —disturbing! I have, like, three or four theses by students about what Barrabás, the dog in The House of the Spirits, means. What does he stand for? One says he stands for the people who would be eventually killed. Or for the male energy in the house, big and threatening.… It was just one dog that we had at home! [Laughs.] I mean, sometimes the dog is just a dog. An umbrella is just an umbrella. It doesn't mean anything.