SOURCE: "After Pinochet," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4826, September 29, 1995, p. 28.

In the following review of Paula, Butt contends that Allende's "defenceless optimism" and "effusive generosity" are effective in her memoirs but not necessarily in her fiction.

Paula is a confessional autobiography written to relieve anguish during the many hours Isabel Allende spent in hospital waiting-rooms while her daughter (Paula) lay in a coma caused by porphyria. Hispanic writers are usually furtive about private matters, but life in California has converted Allende to the North American passion for letting it all hang out. This sometimes embarrassingly frank book reveals much about the author and the motifs and inspiration of her novels.

Allende's gift for story-telling carries Paula, although apart from the trauma of 1973 (Pinochet's coup) and Paula's tragedy, she has no obvious right to complain that "with a brutal expenditure of energy I have been rowing upstream all...