Paula is a 1995 memoir written by Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende Llona is a Chilean writer with American citizenship. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the "magic realist" tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits and City of the Beasts , which have been commercially successful...

. She intended to write a straightforward narrative about the darkest experience of her life. The book is a tribute to to her deceased daughter Paula Frías Allende

Paula Frías Allende

Paula Frías Allende was the daughter of Chilean-American author, Isabel Allende Llona. Her grandfather was a first cousin of Salvador Allende, President of Chile from 1970 to 1973.-Life:...

, who fell into a porphyria

Porphyria

Porphyrias are a group of inherited or acquired disorders of certain enzymes in the heme bio-synthetic pathway . They are broadly classified as acute porphyrias and cutaneous porphyrias, based on the site of the overproduction and accumulation of the porphyrins...

-induced coma

Coma

In medicine, a coma is a state of unconsciousness, lasting more than 6 hours in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light or sound, lacks a normal sleep-wake cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. A person in a state of coma is described as...

 in 1991 and never recovered.

Plot summary

Isabel Allende wrote Paula while tending to her daughter Paula Frías Allende who was in a coma from complications of the disease porphyria

Porphyria

Porphyrias are a group of inherited or acquired disorders of certain enzymes in the heme bio-synthetic pathway . They are broadly classified as acute porphyrias and cutaneous porphyrias, based on the site of the overproduction and accumulation of the porphyrins...

. Allende started the book as a letter to Paula, explaining what she was missing so she would not be confused when she came out of the coma. The novel includes both an account of Paula's treatment and Allende's life, sometimes in parallel with her first novel The House of the Spirits

The House of the Spirits

The House of the Spirits is the debut novel by Isabel Allende. Initially, the novel was rejected by several Spanish-language publishers, but became an instant best seller when published in Barcelona in 1982. The novel was critically acclaimed around the world, and catapulted Allende to literary...

. Paula died on December 6, 1992, survived by her husband Ernesto and other family members.

Themes and issues

• In her agonized self-questioning after she finally concedes defeat and surrenders her daughter to death, Isabel strips to her core in the presence of her brother Juan, who has become a priest:

• In the letter Paula wrote her family on her honeymoon, with the proviso that it was not to be read until after her death, she appears to have foreseen her coma, and her mother's refusal to let her die: