SOURCE: "The Long Goodbye," in The New York Times Book Review, May 21, 1995, p. 11.

In the following review of Paula, Ruta faults Allende's writing as overly sentimental and criticizes Allende for failing to more fully develop Paula's character.

"All sorrows can be borne," Isak Dinesen once said, "if you put them into a story or tell a story about them." That approach worked well for Isabel Allende—until lately. When her beloved grandfather lay dying she wrote him a letter that became her first, and most successful, novel, The House of the Spirits. Grieving for Chile under Pinochet, she wrote Of Love and Shadows. As her first marriage collapsed, she invented the ebullient, upbeat heroine of Eva Luna.

But when her 27-year-old daughter, Paula, fell ill in December 1991 with a hereditary metabolic disorder known as porphyria and quickly lapsed into a coma, the writer's courage failed her. Then her...