Miami: Shortly before the coronavirus pandemic began, Isabel Allende suffered one of the greatest losses of her life: the death of her mother.
On Tuesday, the Chilean author published “violeta”, a novel that begins and ends with an epidemic and that covers the last 100 years of history through the eyes of a grandmother inspired by her mother, panchita, one of the women who marked her the most.
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Violet, a strong woman who manages to overcome innumerable obstacles, little by little reveals details of her family and love life to her grandson Camilo, whom she has raised since the day he was born.
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Set mainly in Chilean Patagonia, with moments in Argentina, Miami and Norway, the novel deals with a wide range of topics, from feminism and verbal abuse, human rights violations and homosexuality, to the passions of love. , infidelity and even global warming. .
Throughout its almost 400 pages, it also reviews the socialist movements, communism, the military dictatorships of the southern cone and the democracies.
“violeta, like my mother, was a person, a beautiful woman, who was not very aware of her beauty. She was smart, visionary, talented, with good ideas to make money,” says Ella Allende, 79, in an interview in Spanish from her home in California. “She takes every opportunity, whether it’s her love life and the life she wants to lead… the difference is that my mom always depended financially on someone.”
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so violet, the woman who tells her grandson that her life is worth telling not so much for her virtues as for her sins, is part mother from beyond, part herself and “a lot of imagination”.
the novel, published in the us. de ballantine, a publishing label of penguin random house, begins at the moment panchita was born, during the so-called spanish flu of 1920, and ends at the moment she died, during the coronavirus in 2020. allende traces almost centenarian life of a woman born into a conservative and wealthy Chilean family, a status that changes radically when the great depression leaves them homeless.
The original idea for the book arose after the death of Allende’s mother. Knowing that the two had had a very close relationship and exchanged thousands of letters daily, some friends from beyond suggested that she write a book about the life of her mother. the novelist was still too emotional to see her mother with enough distance to write about her.
Months passed and, when she felt stronger, she started “violeta” inspired by her mother, but with a marked difference: the protagonist is a woman who supports herself and a good part of her family with her businesses.
the character of camilo, a mischievous and rebellious grandson who raised violet and later became a priest, is inspired by the chilean jesuit priest felipe berríos del solar, a social activist critical of the church who fights against inequality and segregation and that for years he has been a “very close friend” from beyond. The author dedicates the book to him, to her son, Nicolás, and to her daughter-in-law, Lori, her “pillars” in her old age.
And from those conversations between a writer who describes herself as “totally agnostic and feminist” and a progressive priest Camilo emerged, to whom his grandmother Violet confesses her admiration and tells him that he is the greatest love of his life. In real life, Ella Allende feels the same way about her son, Nicolás.
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Perhaps that is also why a large part of the character’s childhood anecdotes are those of his son, who after having made his first communion in a religious school in Venezuela told Allende that he did not believe in God and did not want to go to church ever again, the author recalls.
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Throughout her life, Violeta is marked by death: that of her mother; Ella Nieves de Ella’s daughter, Camilo’s mother (a young drug addict inspired by Jennifer, one of the daughters of Allende’s ex-husband, Willy Gordon); Her governess, Miss Taylor, and a lover, Roy.
The writer herself experienced the death of her 29-year-old daughter Paula in 1992, and that helped her in part with the character.
“I could describe that terrible pain of seeing your daughter die because I lived it,” says Allende, who in 1994 published the memoir “Paula” in honor of her daughter.
Along with love, violence, the strength of women and the absence of parents, death is a recurring theme in allende’s books, from “the house of the spirits” to “a long petal of the sea ”. this time, the message he wanted to convey was what he saw when his mother grew old and was left without friends or loved ones.
“loss is something important in old age. there is so much loss! everything dies to you, ”says the writer, reflecting on the experience of her mother, who died at the age of 98. “It was important to make it clear in the book that the longer you live, the more you lose.”
for allende, the world’s most read living author in spanish, the coronavirus pandemic has been an opportunity. Away from his travels and world promotional tours, he has bought the time he needed to turn more stories into books. “Violet”, Allende’s second book on the pandemic after the non-fiction “The Soul of a Woman”, already has a third ready: a novel about refugees that is in the process of being translated (the author writes fiction in Spanish).
and like every year, on January 8th he started writing a new one.
“I have had time, silence and solitude to write,” says the author, thanking that no one in her family has fallen ill with covid-19. “Maybe I always have stories, I don’t need inspiration; what I need is time to write.”
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