by Isabel Allende. Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden.

HarperCollins. 301 pages. $26.95.

BY LOIS D. ATWOOD
Special to the Journal

Despotism and violence fueled Isabel Allende’s flight from her native Chile. A cousin of the overthrown president, she could not rest until she had brought to California all those she loved most. “A tribe has its inconveniences but also many advantages,” she explains in discussing her need for this group of immediate family and the others melded into it. She was fortunate in making close friends, including her support circle, the Sisters of Perpetual Disorder, composed of “six fiftyish witches” who are “joyful, wise and curious women.”

This memoir is a continuation of her earlier memoir, Paula, written as a letter to the beloved daughter who died in her twenties of complications from a hereditary disease. Paula is present in these musings, remembered, invoked, consulted, still very much a part of her mother’s life. But The Sum of Our Days is more than simply an evocation of the daughter whose suffering and death so preoccupied her mother and the family that Allende had gathered around herself.

Always aware of dimensions beyond the mundane, Allende writes, “With a grandmother like mine, who quite early instilled in me the idea that the world is magic, and that all the rest is man’s delusion of greatness, given that we control almost nothing, know very little, and have only to take a quick look at history to understand the limits of the rational, it isn’t strange that all things seem possible to me.” And in this description of her family’s and friends’ lives, improbabilities are resolved with some frequency. The book is full of extraordinary characters and events.

The author writes of her intense relationship with her husband, Willie, a lawyer working for the poor and hopeless. When his drug-crazed daughter gave birth prematurely to Sabrina, Allende was unable to take care of the baby herself. She called on the Sisters of Disorder for help and prayer. After she told them about the child, a Buddhist nun and her companion adopted Sabrina, continuing to bring her up in the monastery even after they split as a couple.

This record of a large, diverse family reads like a novel and is as gripping as a good thriller. Its author is primarily a novelist; The House of the Spirits, Ines of My Soul and Eva Luna are strong, unforgettable books.

Allende’s prose flows smoothly and inevitably. This memoir is varied and entrancing, drawing a reader in, lighting up not only a vivid group of characters but also the human condition. THE SUM OF OUR DAYS: A Memoir,

platwood@verizon.net