The Sum of Our Days: A Memoir – A Warm, Humorous Story of Motherhood, Love, and Eccentric Family

The Sum of Our Days: A Memoir – A Warm, Humorous Story of Motherhood, Love, and Eccentric Family

“An inspiring and thought-provoking work.”— Denver Post The sequel to Isabel Allende’s beloved bestselling Paula —a loving portrait of a makeshift extended family whose beating heart is its remarkable matriarch—a strong, stubborn, fiercely loyal, and loving woman—who must carry on after an unbearable loss. In this powerful memoir, Isabel Allende reconstructs the painful reality of her life after the death of her daughter, Paula. But The Sum of Our Days is not a tragedy; narrated with warmth, humor, exceptional candor, and wisdom, it is a remarkable story of life that is as exuberant and passionate as Allende herself. Baring her soul, Allende reflects on love, marriage, motherhood, spirituality and religion, infidelity, addiction, and memory—and tells poignant stories of the wildly eccentric and eclectic tribe who become a new kind of family. “Allende is a genius.” - Los Angeles Times Book Review “Surely one of the most graceful and yet haunting writers alive.” - St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Allende projects a women’s point of view with confidence, control, and an expansive definition of romance as a fact of life.” - Time magazine “A vibrant voice, which is at once introspective and forthright…an inspiring and thought-provoking work…The insights resonate, on page after page.” - Denver Post “THE SUM OF OUR DAYS is terrific. It’s funny, insightful, moving and filled with Allende’s unique voice.” - USA Today “Allende’s THE SUM OF OUR DAYS adds up to an exuberant love letter―not only to her daughter, but to her tribe and anyone lucky enough to belong to one.” - St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Allende’s trademark magical realism is ever present...This high-spirited, emotionally packed book enables readers to get a closer look at the life of a much-loved writer.” - Library Journal “A powerful memoir” - Seattle Post-Intelligencer “...Ms.Allende...executes this epistolary memoir with the same authenticity and poetry that grace her fiction...Ms. Allende is a survivor worth reading and emulating.” - Dallas Morning News “A warm meditation on family and love…A book to be savored and reread.” - Kirkus Reviews “A deeply revealing memoir . . . Allende’s insight is keen, her prose polished and her language hypnotic . . . This is a book to savor.” - Publishers Weekly (starred review) Isabel Allende , born in Peru and raised in Chile, is a novelist, feminist, and philanthropist. She is one of the most widely read authors in the world, having sold more than eighty million copies of her books across forty-two languages. She is the author of several bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including The House of the Spirits, Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, and Paula . In addition to her work as a writer, Isabel devotes much of her time to human rights causes. She has received fifteen honorary doctorates, been inducted into the California Hall of Fame, and received the PEN Center Lifetime Achievement Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, and in 2018, she received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation. She lives in California with her husband and dogs. You can visit Isabel Allende at IsabelAllende.com or follow her on Instagram @AllendeIsabel, on Facebook at Facebook.com/IsabelAllende and on X @IsabelAllende