THE SOUL OF A WOMAN
Isabel Allende
Bloomsbury
REVIEWED BY WILLIE CAMPBELL
For many, time spent in enforced lockdown has provided space for reflection on life, values, purpose and future.
Isabel Allende, during her March 2020 lockdown with her husband, pursued influences and outcomes in her life, the lives of her grandparents, mother, children and grandchildren. She engages in a small memoir that uses a series of compressed focuses on herself and then released contextual foils and counter influences.
Giving chronological explanations, acknowledging distinctions between opportunities for previous generations and those coming after her, she generalises from both those and cultural distinctions.
Placing herself in a critical time of personal development in the 1970s, she credits the feminism of that period as being a moment in her destiny, affording her opportunities that her mother had been denied in the strict South American culture that placed women as homemakers subservient to the wishes of men.
This is an elegantly crafted work that skilfully balances the personal with the general and arrives at conclusions for both herself and others. She sees women her age being emboldened grandmothers with nothing to lose, so not being easily scared. They know the value of friendship and collaboration. Along with them she wishes to be safe, to be valued, to live in peace having control over her life. She calls this a stage of self love and kindness. It includes concern for others and active contribution to those less fortunate.
Readers will find this personal meditation, while small, rich in insights and challenges for their own personal reflections.
Willie Campbell is a Dunedin educator
