Author Isabel Allende Isn't Interested in Writing Characters Who Have Easy Lives
Isabel Allende is the writer of 24 books, and is widely considered the world's most widely read Spanish-language author.
Her most recent novel, A Long Petal of the Sea, followed refugees of Spain's Civil War in the 1930s.
In this video celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, Allende reflects on the real-life inspiration behind her epic novels, including her debut The House of the Spirits.
I distinctly remember the first time that I read The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende's entrancing debut novel populated by psychics and green-haired women. It stretched the boundaries of what I considered possible—and such is the goal of magical realism, Allende's signature genre: Making room for magic amid the mundane.
Throughout her decades-spanning career as a writer, Allende has been working her own kind of magic—of the storytelling variety, of course. With 24 books that have sold over 70 million copies, Allende is considered the most widely-read Spanish language author alive. She's best known for her tales of strong (and occasionally supernatural) women, including the famous Truebas of The House of the Spirits.
"Those strong women? I don't make them up. They are all around," Allende, 78, says in a video created by her U.S. publisher, Penguin Random House.
Reflecting on her historic career, Allende identified the trait that all of her characters share: They're prone to making interesting decisions—not necessarily good ones. "I'm not interested in people who have easy lives. They don't make good characters of books," Allende says. She recalls the time her stepfather asked why he didn't show up in her novels. "Because you have common sense," she told him.
Throughout the "Behind the Book" video, Allende opens up about the real people who inspired some of her most beloved titles. For all its inexplicable miracles, The House of the Spirits is grounded in Allende's family history. Her grandmother conducted seances and was widely considered to be clairvoyant—just like Clara del Valle Trueba in The House of the Spirits.
"I grew up with the idea that the world is a very mysterious place, and there are many dimensions of reality. If you open your heart and your mind, your heart is enriched by everything we cannot explain and control, but we see the evidence," Allende says.
Though her 1987 novel Eva Luna is set in an unnamed Latin American country, Allende says it was inspired by her time living in Venezuela, and her friendship with a young artist named Elsa Morales. "She told me her life. Many of the anecdotes in Eva Luna are from Elsa Morales' life. I wanted to describe this exuberant country that I was falling in love with," Allende said.
Later, Allende would revisit the book's titular character in The Stories of Eva Luna, allowing Eva to spool more entrancing narratives about her lives and others'. Passionate and mesmerizing, The Stories of Eva Luna is like a mixtape of Allende's favorite tropes: Deep love, surreal twists, and unforgettable women characters with strong convictions.
Though Eva Luna and The House of the Spirits swerve toward the fantastical, Allende's trove of historical fiction, like The Japanese Lover and Ines of My Soul, proves that real life is more than dramatic enough to fuel an epic. Readers living through this unprecedented year may especially relate these characters' struggles to make individual decisions while caught up in the swell of history, another one of her work's themes.
A Long Petal of the Sea, Allende's most recent novel, was inspired by the tales of displaced people that perpetually populate the news. In the late 1930s, half a million Spaniards fled to France during the Spanish Civil War. Thanks to efforts by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, 2,000 of those refugees were granted asylum in Chile and welcomed with open arms—quite literally. The cargo ship that carried the destitute refugees across the sea was greeted by crowds in the harbor.
Allende got to know one of those individuals while exiled herself in Venezuela during Chile's 17-year-long dictatorship. Sadly, Victor Pey—who first told Allende the story of his travails—died six days before Allende's book reached his home, at the age of 103. "He told the kind of details that you don't find in history books," Allende said.
With A Long Petal of the Sea, Allende shows what can happen if refugees are welcomed instead of shunned. "They changed the culture. They brought Europe to Chile. These people contributed so much that they, and their descendants, are the best-known artists, scientists in Chile. It's a happy story of refugees that are incorporated and welcomed into a society," Allende said of the Spanish refugees. "They enrich the society. If they are marginalized, then they become a problem. But if they are part of a society, everybody wins."
Some of her work is more explicitly personal. The 2014 memoir Paula explores the grief following the loss of her daughter, Paula Frias, of a rare disease at the age of 29. "I didn't have the intention of publishing it. I just needed to exorcise all of the grief and pain. It's a book written with tears," Allende said. Ultimately, she decided to share her book with the world and donate the proceeds to a foundation that continues Frias' work supporting women and girls around the world.
In the video, Allende only focuses on four of her novels—but there are many more, and certainly even more stories about their inspiration. We'll just have to read between the lines to find them.
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