Dear Isabel,
Abi Oliver, A Letter From my Tea Garden
At the beginning of lockdown, a friend sent me a piece you had written on your feelings about the times facing us, and it spoke to me. I had read one of your novels many years ago, still during the time of the ‘disappeared’ in Chile, your country of birth. Heaven knows why, but I had not read any more of your books. During lockdown I had the enormous pleasure of putting that right.
Now, after a lot of reading, I am one of your many fans! I look upon you as an elder, and truly superior soul sister of writing and I will soon have read everything you have written.
I began with Paula, the account of the agonizing months before the death of your daughter, at the age of 28. You waited, day, after endless day, in a hospital in Madrid, where Paula lay in a coma. And to keep yourself sane, you started to write, for her – and eventually for all of us – the story of your family. Which, it has to be said, is not exactly average. Paula is a book of laughter – at the extraordinary activities of the family – and of many tears. It also tells of Paula temporary awakening from her coma, utterly changed from the vivid young woman she had previously been, the care you and your family gave her, and then her death. What grief; what sadness.
Next, I had to read your first novel, The House of Spirits, which brought you to world fame and opened up for so many people, stories of Chile, the ‘country at the end of the world.’ Again, it is based on your family: ghosts, a stepfather with ‘satanic eyebrows’, a clairvoyant grandmother, huge shaggy dog and other animals all included. It is one of the richest novels I have ever read. And then Long Petal of the Sea appeared in my local supermarket…
I love your novels for their grand sweeps of time, their rich casts of characters, their depiction of regions I knew almost nothing about before, for their humour, their sadness.
So, when I say you are like a ‘big sister’ of the novel, I mean that you write the kind of novels I wish I could write and definitely ones I like to read. You are a feminist, closely aware of the grassroots reality and suffering of so many women in the world. Your daughter Paula was a sweet soul, born to serve others. Her maxim was, ‘what is the most generous response I can give in this situation?’ And I know you have strived to keep her spirit alive in this.
Thank you, Isabel. For your wonderful books. For writing just the sort of novels I love – wide-ranging stories of families and vivid characters, encompassing so many of life’s joys and sorrows. I can’t wait to read the next one.
Isabel Allende, Chilean writer, born Lima, Peru, 1942, living in California since exile from Chile in 1973.
Abi Oliver – Letter From A Tea Garden, July 2022. This summer’s women’s fiction read!
Hardback £13.99, Paper back £8.99, eBook £2.99
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