Mayas Notebook

(Paperback)

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Description

The author of The House of the Spirits returns with a gritty yet transcendent tale of teenage addiction.
The narrator and protagonist of Mayas Notebook is a 19-year-old girl who grows up in Berkeley, California, and falls into a life of drug addiction and crime. To rescue Maya, and save her from the criminal types pursuing her, Maya's Chilean grandmother sends her to a remote island off the southern coast of Chile. Here she lives among a traditional rural people, the Chilote, who speak an older form of Spanish and have remained largely isolated from the materialism, crime, and fast-paced contemporary life which is our own. The book alternates between the narrative in the US and that on Chiloe, the island, so the two strands of the story unfold for the reader at more or less the same time.

This new book is very different from Isabel's previous historical novels: a contemporary setting; an American (of Latino descent) teenage drug addict as the protagonist and narrating voice; a realistic style of writing rather than a magical realistic one (Chiloe exists, and one can visit it). Maya's voice is modeled on that of Isabel's teenage granddaughter, a native of the Bay area (San Francisco, Berkeley).

Reviews

Another impressive feat with a dazzling cast and bold array of landscapes, woven together with the storytelling prowess that is Allendes trademark. Daily Telegraph, 4 stars

Isabel Allende is a mistress storyteller [her] capacity to surprise keeps her readers page-turning, as do her descriptions of character and place Independent

Maya is the lightest of narrative guises: wise beyond her 19 years but convincingly coltish. Guardian

An exciting read, well paced. Daily Express

Author Bio

Isabel Allende is the author of twelve works of fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Maya"s Notebook, Island Beneath the Sea, Ins of My Soul, Daughter of Fortune, and a novel that has become a world-renowned classic, The House of the Spirits. Born in Peru and raised in Chile, she lives in California.