If you are an Allende fan I think you will like this book, altough if you have read interviews with allende then some of the content will be already known to you. It is a kind of memoir that reads like a long monologue, almost a chat with the author as it feels quite friendly and intimate, almost confessional.. Allende talks about what feminism means to her and about how it has shaped her life. The book starts out like a standard linear autobiography. Allende talks about how her mother marries against her family's wishes and then is left by her husband and has to live beholden on the charity of her family. She recounts how her mother had few opportunities and how Allende's grandfather teaches her about how hard it is for women and how she must forge her own path. Pretty soon however, Allende departs from her linear narrative interspersing the narrative about her life to discourse about what and whom she feels the fight against the patriarchy encompasses . This going off at tangents whilst making the memoir feel like an extended sit down with the author, can sometimes get in the way of the narrative and at times makes the narrative feel muddled and rushed. Allende speaks with great poignancy about the utter heartbreak of losing her daughter, Paula and of the joy and fulfillment that motherhood brings. Sh erecounts how things were for women in Chile in the 1970's and about how wonderful the emerging fight for womens rights felt.

This is a non-fiction, memoir, written through the lens of Allende's take on feminism and what it means to her now and looking back on what it has meant to her throughout her life. She revisits a lot of the material in her previous books, talking about her childhood and her struggle as a young mother, a wife and a working woman. She also talks about how the death of her daughter shaped her thinking. I knew quite a lot of what she writes about already, having read a lot of her work and also having read quite a lot about modern feminism. The conjunction of her ideas, her activism and her story telling give it a freshness that still makes this appealing.