Maya’s Notebook by Isabel Allende

EXCERPT: A week ago my grandmother gave me a dry-eyed hug at San Francisco airport and told me again that if I valued my life at all, I should not get in touch with anyone I knew until we could be sure my enemies were no longer looking for me. My Nini is paranoid, as the residents of the People’s Independent Republic of Berkley tend to be, persecuted as they are by the government and extraterrestrials, but in my case she wasn’t exaggerating: no amount of precaution could ever be enough. She handed me a hundred-page notebook so I could keep a diary, as I did from the age of eight until I was fifteen, when my life went off the rails.
‘You’re going to have time to get bored, Maya. Take advantage of it to write down the monumental stupidities you’ve committed, see if you can come to grips with them,’ she said.
Several of my diaries are still in existence, sealed with industrial strength adhesive tape. My grandfather kept them under lock and key in his desk for years, and now my Nini has them in a shoebox under her bed. This will be notebook number nine. My Nini believes they will be of use to me when I get psychoanalyzed, because they contain the keys to untie the knots of my personality; but if she’d read them, she’d know they contain a huge pike of tales tall enough to outfox Freud himself. My grandmother distrusts on principle professionals who charge by the hour, since quick results are not profitable for them. However, she makes an exception for psychiatrists, because one of them saved her from depression and from the traps of magic when she took it into her head to communicate with the dead.
I put the notebook in my bag, so I wouldn’t upset her, with no intention of using it, but it’s true that time stretches out here and writing is one way of filling up the hours. This first week of exile has been a long one for me. I’m on a tiny island so small it’s almost invisible on the map, in the middle of the Dark Ages. It’s complicated to write about my life, because I don’t know how much I actually remember and how much is a product of my imagination; the bare truth can be tedious and so, without even noticing, I change or exaggerate it, but I intend to correct this defect and lie as little as possible in the future. And that’s why now, even when the Yanomamis of the Amazons use computers, I am writing by hand. It takes me ages and my writing must be in Cyrillic script, because I can’t even decipher it myself, but I imagine it’ll gradually straighten out page by page. Writing is like riding a bicycle: you don’t forget how, even if you go for years without doing it. I’m trying to go in chronological order, since some sort of order is required and I thought that would make it easy, but I lose my thread, I go off on tangents or I remember something important several pages later and there’s no way to fit it in. My memory goes in circles, spirals and somersaults.

ABOUT ‘MAYA’S NOTEBOOK’: Isabel Allende’s latest novel, set in the present day (a new departure for the author), tells the story of a 19-year-old American girl who finds refuge on a remote island off the coast of Chile after falling into a life of drugs, crime, and prostitution. There, in the company of a torture survivor, a lame dog, and other unforgettable characters, Maya Vidal writes her story, which includes pursuit by a gang of assassins, the police, the FBI, and Interpol. In the process, she unveils a terrible family secret, comes to understand the meaning of love and loyalty, and initiates the greatest adventure of her life: the journey into her own soul.

MY THOUGHTS: I love the way Maya’s Notebook reads like a memoir – and the interweaving of Chilean history only reinforces this feeling. There were things written of that I remember happening, but others that I was totally unaware of so as I was reading, I was also furiously googling various events. Sometimes we forget that we are living history.

I grew from being wary of the character of Maya, not sure that I would like her at all, to rooting for her 100%. I felt a little bereft once the book ended, left wondering how the rest of Maya’s life would pan out.

Allende’s writing is, as always, raw, gritty and honest. She doesn’t pretty things up – she just tells it like it is. But her writing is also beautiful, almost lyrical in places. I loved her descriptions of the small Chilean island of Chiloe, which I never knew existed until I read this book. She describes the life of the islanders, their complex relationships, their fierce loyalties, and their customs.

She shows just how easy it is for a young person to spiral into a cycle of self-destruction and depression, to feel totally lost and overwhelmed, abandoned. Grief plays a huge part in Maya’s life. She is totally abandoned by her mother, effectively abandoned by her father, and raised by the most wonderful grandparents. Her world is tilted off axis when her beloved ‘Popo’ dies suddenly, and her descent into hell begins.

This is a story of love and loss, addictions, pain and suffering, deception, friendship and familial strength. Not always an easy read, but a very fulfilling and worthwhile one.

I own my copy of Maya’s Notebook by Isabel Allende.