“While other girls worried about their appearance and how to attract boys, I was preaching socialism and feminism. No wonder I had no friends.” Isabel Allende’s memoir The Soul of a Woman is a delightful short read that shares with the reader Allende’s words of wisdom on feminism, oppression, and growing older.
“And what is my definition of feminism? It is not what we have between our legs but what we have between our ears.”
Not only do we hear snippets of Allende’s childhood in machismo Chile, the relationship with her elders and her fierce motivations to fight for equality from a young age. We are also introduced to many incredible women, movements and charities that are transforming the lives of others across the globe.
“I don’t need to invent the protagonists in my books, this strong and determined women, because I am surrounded by the likes of them.”
Truly transcendent this work spans continents, addresses the varying situations of many women across the globe through anecdotes and real life stories.
“You have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.”
Allende’s spirit for life, advocacy for change and self-depreciating humour make this lockdown work a treat to read.

Described as "a meditation on power, feminism and what it means to be a woman" by literary legend Isabel Allende, I was super excited to dive into this memoir. As someone who's taken part in the first wave of feminism, proved herself as a fierce woman journalist and one of the first Chilean women writers to gain popularity, Allende is a force of a woman. ⁠
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The beginning starts very strong: "When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating," she writes. As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children. Her grandfather played a big part in her upbringing too, and even though he was a traditional and strict man, he had a soft spot for Isabel. She went on to become a defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn't have.⁠
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I thoroughly enjoyed these parts of the book. It's the "becoming", the "coming-of-age" that we are all eager to discover in memoirs. Allende is only a few years older than my parents and I enjoyed reading about the 1960s, and even though Chile is a completely different culture to the one my parents (and I, for that matter) grew up in, it hints at the times. ⁠
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The bulk of the first half of the book talks about Isabel's reckoning with old age, how she embraced it and despite the slowing down, she determinedly lives her life with full lungs. ⁠
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She also talks about her marriages and how she came to find (or better yet, it found her) love in her 70s and deciding to give a third marriage a go. ⁠
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In the second half of the book, Isabel talks about her foundation that helps women get medical help with abortion and recounts a personal story from her youth that led her to be extremely passionate about this subject.

According to Allende, what women want can be summed up thus: to be safe, to be valued, to live in peace, to have their own resources, to be connected, to have control over their bodies and lives, and above all, to be loved.She ends with a call-to-arms to the young generations of women to "carry on the work still left to be finished".

The memoir has all the right ingredients, and yet sadly, I found it underwhelming. I would have loved to hear more personal anecdotes and less (oftentimes) empty tropes about feminism; more specific, less generic. It's a worthwhile read if you are a super fan of Isabel Allende's work and want to discover a few details about her life.

The Soul of a Woman is out next week, on 2nd March.

Thanks to Bloombsbury Publishing and NetGalley for my advanced digital copy.

Isabelle Allende will be 80 in 2022. In this short non-fiction book she meditates on her life and political ideals. As a prolific novelist and humanitarian, the book is wide-ranging in topics and centres largely on the rights of woman. A feminist since the age of five, this desire is embedded from within the loving but patriarchal family life with her mother and siblings in the home of her grandfather and then stepfather. There are reflections on how things have improved in the world in some quarters and where remarkable women have made positive impacts of the lives of other women (including a very personal story). This is a definite read for fans of Isabelle Allende and for those interested in socIal, political and world affairs.

Isabel Allende is a remarkable author who has led a very interesting life, The Soul of a Woman is like sitting down and having a conversation with her. Her thoughts don't just cover feminism, they include gender, aging, youth and poverty across the world and regardless of your age or gender you can relate to them.

I was given a copy of The Soul of a Woman by NetGalley and the publishers in return for an unbiased review.

Having read her most recent novel, only last year, I was intrigued by the prospect of reading Isabel Allende’s memoir, The Soul of a Woman. I had enjoyed The Long Petal of the Sea a great deal and looked forward to discovering more about an author whose work I had finally come to admire through first-hand experience rather than from merely being aware of her formidable reputation.

As someone who can be described with frankly depressing accuracy as “pale, male and stale” it is probably fair to say that I have not been as informed as I should have been about the women’s movement in general. Yet even I, who has been fully aware of the impact of the Russian revolution and the rise and fall of communism in the twentieth century and that of the digital revolution in more recent years, have not failed to recognise that the feminist revolution that has taken place over the last century and a half has had a more profound and far-reaching effect on the lives of us all than either of these. And during a long and active life Isabel Allende has been at the forefront of this revolution.

Allende tells us that she has been feminist since she was in kindergarten. This, I think, is because she grew up witnessing her mother’s experience as a single mother (her father had abandoned the family when she was very young) at a time when Chilean society was deeply conservative and rigidly patriarchal. Allende’s mother did what she had to do in such a society to ensure that her children were properly provided for. In truth, she chose well trading freedom for security to provide a stepfather willing and able to support and protect her children.

In this book Allende often mentions machismo and, of course, this is because it was the dominant form of male behaviour across South America when she was growing up in the 1940s and 1950s. For men at that time machismo represented honour, bravery, dominance, and sexual prowess. For Allende it is associated with the patriarchy and male violence and chauvinism. Men at that time believed it was their role to protect and provide for their families but to give the orders; the role of women was to serve, to care for their families and to obey. It is this form of society that Allende’s mother lived and acquiesced in and the society that Allende herself reacted against from a young age, defiant, obstinate and with a visceral hatred for male chauvinism.

In the 1960s she was finally able to channel her considerable energies into journalism and help bring the feminist revolution and the fight against the patriarchy to Chile. She worked on the feminist magazine “Paula” challenging attitudes to all sorts of taboos, such as abortion, contraception, and prostitution, questioning sacred ideas such as motherhood, and shining a light on issues that until then were rarely spoken of such as domestic violence or female infidelity.

For Allende women are powerful because they have, much more than men, empathy, solidarity, and resilience. It is women that create life while it seems men destroy life – destruction is a masculine trait. This is something of a simplification but perhaps an understandable one when one considers the society that Allende is a product of. Men are capable of empathy, solidarity, and resilience but the nature of patriarchal societies perhaps works against the development of such traits in men in many parts of the world. Violence against the person though does appear to be an overwhelmingly male trait – 90% of violent crime is committed by men. Men are encouraged to repress their emotions and are limited by a straitjacket of masculinity. In truth, the feminist movement, by working to enable women to be ambitious, competitive, powerful, erotic, and self-confident, is also working to free men from the constraints and limitations placed upon them by the patriarchy. By being made to give up the control men can be free of the fear, the uncertainties, and the insecurities that their machismo is hiding.

Allende sees her generation as a transitional one: the bridge between her mother’s generation who had little, if any, hope for change and the generations of women that have followed her own and who continue to make progress. She has dedicated a great deal of her time and resources throughout her adult life to the cause of women around the world, working with a foundation dedicated to empowering vulnerable women and girls.

This memoir also contains much about Allende’s life and loves. It also contains her thoughts on the experience of ageing noting that while the body will deteriorate the person within the body can be reborn and become less angry, more passionate about the important things in life, and learn to understand that there is no longer have anything to prove and that to be vulnerable is not a weakness.

Sylvia Plath is said to have commented that her greatest tragedy was to have been born a woman. Isabel Allende appears to have spent much of her life demonstrating in no uncertain terms that that was not the case for her. That with determination and a lot of hard work, it was possible for a woman of her generation to break down the barriers and to live a life that is as independent and fulfilled as any man. The energy and passion for life and the cause of women and the oppressed in general that is on display in this fascinating book should be an inspiration to many women of the generations that follow hers; and to quite a few men as well.

I would like to express my thanks to Net Galley and Bloomsbury Publishing for making a free download of this book available to me.

Well I absolutely love isabel allende and the imagery she creates within her books. This book lived up to every expectation i have of her and i think she keeps getting better and better. Beautiful read.

I devoured this book yesterday after a hard day at work.

I have read some of Allende's work in the past, but this felt different, as it's based in her own life and experiences, rather than being pure fiction. Isabel's voice in this book is funny, sarcastic.... and still managed to be informative. There are a couple of people I will look into after reading this book, and I have added a few more of Allende's own books to my TBR .

A 5-star book for me (which is quite uncommon). I've already been raving about it to quite a few people.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I'm going to preface this review by saying that I read an ARC version of this book. That doesn't usually play into my review thoughts, but in this case it was a very unfinished version of the book. Lines were missing, words were missing, and at times it felt sections were out of order. It made it quite difficult to read. That isn't a reflection on the author or the finished book, and it's testament to how much I wanted to read this that I kept on with it despite all that. But I'm saying this because it's likely that my review will not be as glowing as if I had been reading the finished thing. What I'm saying is, this book is probably even better than I think it is.


Isabel Allende caught my attention when I read The House of the Spirits last year. I thought that book was phenomenal and plan to read more/all of her work. In typical me-style, I have yet to make good on that goal, but when I saw she had written a memoir about being a woman I jumped at the chance to read it.

This book does more than combine a beloved author with a topic close to my heart. It also ticks two other boxes, in that it reads like a chat over good coffee with a friend and is also written by a woman in her older years imparting the knowledge that she's gained from a life very well lived. In this memoir we learn about her family, of her childhood with a mother who had been left to raise her children alone and a grandfather who, whilst loving, was very much a patriarch. Allende talks about the roots of her feminism from a young age, up to the present where she fronts her own charitable organisation for women's rights in memory of her daughter, who died at just 29. She talks about her experiences of relationships and motherhood, and her opinions on beauty, patriarchy and freedom.

This book was fascinating, and I don't think you have to have read her books before to enjoy it. She's a very talented writer, with a warmth and wisdom which is tempered with wit. Her insights are valuable, both in terms of feminism and how to live as free from patriarchal structures as we can, but also in terms of being true to ourselves. A voice definitely worth listening to.

This is a searing book at a timely moment that deserves its place in the canon of feminist books to be read by generations to come. An important and highly recommended read.

“Patriarchy has not always existed. It is not inherent to the human condition, it is imposed by culture.”

The Soul of a Woman is a small book of feminist reflections from a literary legend. Written during the pandemic, Isabel reflects on her experiences from a young girl – daughter to a single mother growing up under a violent dictatorship in Chile – through to her place as a venerated older woman today living in California.

Isabel reflects on what she has witnessed, how her own experiences shaped her – from a caring stepfather, though machismo in the all-powerful Catholic Church to supporting her friends through the ordeals of backstreet abortions – and how these conflicting examples of masculinity and male authority have influenced her outlook.

As Isabel herself notes, this book is “an informal chat” rather than a polemic. This is not weighty but an informed conversation. Nevertheless, there are astute observations here such as how women have been at the centre of many historical protests that were not then considered feminist, such as the marches for the Disappeared in her native Chile.

But I particularly loved Isabel’s emphasis and enduring faith in the camaraderie of women, their shared community. The way women have found strength from each other. Because the only way through this is together.

It was a real shame that the kindle version of this book was missing words and letters which made it difficult to read at times. I thought I was missing large sections of paragraphs as a sentence would start mid way through and I got a bit lost.

That aside, I was not familiar with Isabel Allende's previous books and went into this unaware of her background or life story and it left me wanted to know more. She touched on some aspects of her life that I wished she had gone into more detail about but perhaps that is in her other books and she didn't want to cover old ground.

Overall a very readable book despite the formatting glitches.

Unfortunately the Kindle format provided was missing words (and parts of words), making it very hard to read and enjoy!
As usual, Allende writes beautifully, a story of her life and her feminist views. However, this book seems to be stitched together, rather than flowing.

I requested this book from the publisher almost completely blindly, and I'm so happy I did. It's a book by a Latin American woman, about being a woman and a feminist.

Allende describes her life through the lens of growing up to be a feminist. She talks about her experiences in Chile and her struggle against patriarchy, which she saw everywhere--in education, politics, in church, and her own family. It was not only men--her grandfather and stepfather--who upheld patriarchy (despite loving their family members dearly), but also her mother.

Through this, she explains what feminism is, not a struggle against men, but a struggle against the socio-economic system that puts down all kinds of groups--women, queer people, all those who are marginalized, including some men. Patriarchy exists because those "at the top of the chicken coop" have no reason to question the rules.

Allende considers being a woman a blessing, because it gave her a chance to participate in women's revolution and changing the society. She talks about the process of growing to like the fact that she was a woman and discovering that what she hated was how she was seen and what limitations were imposed on her due to being a woman and not her femininity itself. She also discusses gender and gender non-conformity, gender expression, youth, and sexuality.

Allende was born in Chile and talks about Chile a lot. Despite the geographical distance between that country and mine, I didn't feel like what she was talking about felt distant at all, on the contrary, it hit very close to home. The state of patriarchal societies may be different in different parts of the worlds, but that doesn't make them any less ubiquitous.

All in all, it's a good non-fiction book that everybody should read.

Isabelle Allende looks back over her life from the viewpoint of her gender, as a woman and looks at how the family she was born into, and their circumstances contributed to her own growth and development and attitudes.

Her mother Panchita was abandoned by her husband in Peru with two toddlers and newborn (Isabel), forcing her to return to her family in Chile. It is this circumstance she ascribes her rebellion against male authority to. A fear and darkness in childhood, a pre-verbal trauma and conscious frustration as she aged, that ensured she would do everything in her power not to inhabit that vulnerable space women so easily fall into.

Of course she is thwarted by her own passion(s) and marries a number of times, but she becomes obsessed with justice, develops a visceral reaction to male chauvinism and is so shocked by an experience she had in India, a random roadside breakdown event, that she creates a foundation for vulnerable girls, today run by her daughter in law.

At times the commentary seemed superficial, almost as if written too quickly, there were gaps, assertions without the facts, anecdotes, generalizations etc about women, men, feminism, the patriarchy, but then there were the silver linings, the moments of truth when she'd strike a chord that vibrated and made one pause.

Being in the later years of her life, she also reflects on that era, on the post retirement years and her attitude towards them, how she sees that she has changed, what she is and isn't prepared to compromise on.

It's provocative, insightful and an invitation to join the conversation and the action, to continue the work towards empowerment of women on their own terms and not as defined by the other. An optimist who drives a hard bargain, she also is one who says yes to life, prepared to take risks and then manage the consequences.

Though it was a galley and I shouldn't quote from it, and it's difficult to anyway as every 'fi' is removed and often the beginnings of sentences, I finish with her thoughts, which were inspired by her reading or perhaps listening to Jampolsky on forgiveness.

"More energy is needed to sustain ill feelings than to forgive. The key to contentment is forgiveness of others and ourselves."

And asks the question "What kind of world do we want?

This is my first Isabel Allende but I have heard great things about her writing. I liked the style of her writing and the premise of the novel but not sure if the execution met my expectations. I think maybe the layout of the novel was a bit scattered and jumpy in my opinion.

An empowering reflection on womxnhood; Allende questions what it means to be a womxn in a society that has a patriarchal structure.

I was more or less familiar with Allende's story from the time of Paula or My Invented Country, but in fact years have passed and her story has gone hand in hand with that of feminism or associations that deal with the protection of women, or girls, or contraception, or child abuse, or equal opportunities, etc.etc. of which the author tells in the book.
There are some extremely amusing passages and it is also refreshing the way in which Allende describes some of the situations in which, willy-nilly, she found herself.

La storia della Allende mi era piú o meno nota dai tempi di Paula o Il mio paese inventato, ma in effetti sono passati anni e la sua storia é proseguita di pari passo con quella del femminismo o delle associazioni che si occupano della salvaguardia delle donne, o delle bambine, o della contraccezione, o degli abusi sui minori, o delle pari opportunitá, etc.etc. di cui l'autrice racconta nel libro.
Ci sono dei passaggi estremamente divertenti ed é anche rinfrescante il modo in cui la Allende descrive alcune delle situazioni in cui, volente o nolente, si é ritrovata.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

To start with, the awful formatting - with letters and words missing - made this nearly impossible to read. But even past that, the odd, stream-of-consciousness style in which she writes is incredibly off-putting and hard to read.

The book doesn't offer anything new. Allende touts a weird brand of feminism that seems old-fashioned and that I do not agree with. There's a lot of discussion about her brand of 'girl power', about 'machismo' (I have no idea why this word was used so frequently), about the things she has learned from life. Occasionally, she touches on the development of fifth wave feminism, speaking of her grandchildren being non-binary, but it seems to be done in a tongue in cheek fashion, rather than out of genuine interest.

What I especially had a problem with was Allende's remarks about Muslim women and the burqa being used as an oppressive tool. She mentions it multiple times, passing judgement over a religion and culture that is not her own and that she has never been a part of. Who is she to decry what a woman should or shouldn't wear? To suggest that women who wear the burqa are being oppressed by a piece of clothing? Her entire book is supposed to be about the freedom of women - something we cannot achieve if women insist on policing other women and their choices. As the Human Rights Watch says in its 'Beyond the Burqa' article, the problem is not
the item of clothing but the system in which it operates.

It left a bitter taste in my mouth. I will not be returning to her work.

Unfortunately the formatting in the Kindle version of this leaves the text unreadable at times. It seems as though the 'f' is missing from every word which should have one, and as such I really struggled to read this without rereading a sentence several times and trying to dicpher the writing. Not a great experience.

As such I can't read or rate this, although what little I could decipher I really enjoyed. Isabel Allende really captures the essence of Chilean culture and her love for her family (especially her mother). I'll purchase the finished text to continue reading.

Part memoir, part feminist opinion piece, The Soul of a Woman is extremely readable. Allende writes in a chatty and conversational tone, even when dealing with tough personal subjects like her daughter’s death, and difficult political ideas. I was particularly interested in Allende’s accounts of the feminist movement in Chile, not something I had ever really thought about before, and her writing about her personal introductions to feminism, socialism, and activism as a young person. I rarely go on to read the finished and published books when I’m lucky enough to get review copies, but I might in this case because I enjoyed a lot of what I read but found the galley to be too jumbled - and confusingly missing words and chunks of words! - to be sure that I was taking it all in.