This vanished father is almost the only person Allende describes without affection. Later she realized, "he just descended a rung in the immutable scale of Chile's social classes and became invisible." As a child she imagined him fleeing the country in disguise. Isabel's father, suspected of arranging this incident, disappeared. One evening a politician saw his own son, "decked out in a corset and lace garters," with another man. A millionaire who lent his apartment for clandestine affairs had a false mirror through which a second group of guests could view the unwitting couples. He abandoned his family in the aftermath of a scandal. The story she tells, which is interspersed with passages describing the course of her daughter's illness, begins with the marriage of her innocent, kindly mother to a dandy in a white linen suit whose good looks and love of ostentation made him "the indispensable element in Lima's revels." At the height of the Second World War, Allende writes, " obtained the best whiskey, the purest cocaine, and the most obliging party girls all doors opened to him." This heartfelt autobiography is astonishing in its power to speak directly to the reader, perhaps because Allende's voice has a health and generosity that we welcome even when she writes of tragedy.
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