Book Club Extraordinaire
  • Home
    • BExtraordinaire Calendar
  • Blog BExtraordinaire
  • Past Reads
    • 2021 >
      • The Mysteries
      • The Long Petal of the Sea
      • The Silent Patient
      • The Broken Heart of America
      • The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
    • 2020 >
      • Where the Crawdads Sing
      • Death of a Red Heroine
      • Age of Light
      • Beneath the Scarlet Sky
      • Next Year in Havana
      • What the Wind Knows
      • Simon the Fiddler
      • The Dutch House
      • Dear Edward
    • 2019 >
      • Caleb's Crossing
    • 2018 >
      • Educated
      • To Have and To Have Not
    • 2017 >
      • A Gentleman in Moscow
    • 2016 >
      • The Mare
      • Fates and Furies
    • 2015 >
      • Citizens of London
      • Euphoria
      • The Blue Flower
      • Being Mortal
      • Waiting for Snow in Havana
      • All that is Solid Melts into Air
      • All the Light We Cannot See
    • 2014 >
      • On Such a Full Sea
      • A Canticle for Leibowitz
      • The Luminaries
      • The Lowland
      • Alice Munro shorts
      • The Goldfinch
      • The Round House
      • Salvage the Bones
    • 2013 >
      • The Monuments Men
      • Wild
      • The Great Fire
      • A Time of Gifts
      • Sweet Tooth
      • The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
      • To the End of the Land
      • The Casual Vacancy
      • Canada
      • The Light Between Oceans
    • 2012 >
      • One Amazing Thing
      • Bossypants
      • The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
      • Rules of Civility
      • Cutting for Stone
      • Just Kids
      • Red Badge of Courage
      • Lost on Treasure Island
      • The Reluctant Fundamentalist
      • The Children's Book
    • 2011 >
      • The Cellist of Sarajevo
      • Food Rules
      • Freedom
      • Unbroken
      • The Painted Veil
      • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
      • Elegance of the Hedgehog
      • Soul Mountain
  • Highlights
    • The Complete List
  • ReaderRec

Blog Extraordinaire

Wednesday Writers Write

5/1/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture
After finishing David Grossman’s moving novel To the End of The Land, about the anguish of a mother over the possible death of her son written as Grossman grieved the loss of his son during an Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I began thinking about other writers who used the writing process to help make sense of their loss.

Chilean writer, Isabel Allende, author of The House of the Spirits (1985) and Daughter of Fortune (1999), is one who came to mind. Her anguished letters written at her daughter’s hospital bedside became the memoir, Paula (1994). The loss of a child is the most significant and traumatic death of a family member, the most personal loss any individual can face. Paula Frias, 26, falls ill and lapses into a coma, and ultimately dies at age 28. Allende finds solace in the letters she writes to her daughter. Her letters tell the story of her family history she plans to share with her daughter when she awakens. These letters become the basis for her memoir, it begins with, “Listen Paula, I am going to tell you a story so that when you wake up you will not feel so lost.”

The process of writing helped her move from the depths of grief to a celebration of her daughter’s life. She explained: “I had a choice…Was I going to commit suicide? Sue the hospital? Or was I going to write a book that would heal me?” (Hornblower) The act of writing became an act of hope to combat her feelings of anger, guilt, fear and despair.

In honor of her daughter, Allende started the Isabel Allende Foundation. Read more about their story at http://www.isabelallendefoundation.org/iaf.php.

Maier, Linda. “Mourning Becomes Paula: The Writing Process as Therapy for Isabel Allende.” Hispania, Vol. 86, No. 2 (May, 2003), pp. 237-243

Hornblower, Margot. “Grief and Rebirth.” Rev. of Paula, by Isabel Allende. Time 10, July 1995: 65


0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Kathy Corey
    I'm an expert amateur or maybe an amateur expert.

    Archives

    May 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010

    LinkedinFacebookBlog RSSTwitter

    Email us
Tweets by @kathycorey

Categories

All
A.S. Byatt
Authors
Barbery
Bextraordinaire
Biography
Blogs
Book Club
Books
Bossypants
Byatt
China
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Elegance Of The Hedgehog
Fiction
Food Rules
Franzen
Freedom
Galloway
Gao
Hamid
Hillenbrand
Just Kids
Lacks
Maugham
Movies
Niffennegger
Nonfiction
Novel
Painted Veil
Patti Smith
Pollan
Quotes
Read
Rebecca Skloot
Red Badge Of Courage
Sankovitch
Skloot
Song Dynasty
Soul Mountain
Stephen Crane
The Cellist Of Sarajevo
The Children
The Children's Book
The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks
The Relucant Fundamentalist
The Time Traveler
Tolstoy And The Purple Chair
Unbroken
Video
World War Ii
Ww Ii
Zamperini

RSS Feed

View my profile on LinkedIn