Allende’s house still full of spirit, plus an assortment of utter chaos

The Sum of Our Days, By Isabel Allende, Fourth Estate, €26.60

Isabel Allende responds creatively to extremes. She was in exile in Venezuela when she heard her grandfather was on his deathbed; a letter to him turned into her first novel, the House of the Spirits.

When her daughter died of the rare blood disease porphyria in 1992, she began to write Paula, an anguished, devastating memoir detailing the leadup to and immediate ...