Isabel Allende's new memoir begins with her daughter's death. But as she explains to Anita Sethi, writing is about life, and the attempt to change it

She shows me a copy of the first edition of her first book, the House of the Spirits, now turning yellow and brittle, yet the writing seems as fresh as ever. "Nothing has the same impact as the first book, no matter how ugly it is now. You feel like your life has changed, and it does. That book gave me voice and allowed me to do something with my life". She has written 17 books since then, beginning each one on January 8, a ritual motivated partly by superstition, but mainly by discipline. Her calendar and life are so hectic, she explains, that she needs to set aside a few months where she does not do anything but write. "I get up every morning early, when the sky is red, and write for 10 hours". The thorny issues that writing an intimate memoir of family life can often throw up are well known to Allende, who showed a draft to family members. "Everyone came back with a different story of the events I've written about, but it's my perspective, my version. Unfortunately for my family, they have a writer in the family", she laughs. The book has accuracy, immediacy and freshness, however. "Sooner or later everything gets forgotten. But the letters have helped me remember." Allende touches on the blurred line between memory and imagination, the question of how a writer can distinguish between how much they remember and how much they imagine. "Memory is tinted by imagination. Both are so linked that it's hard to separate them." There is something about handwriting that aids memory, muses Allende, since it retains "the beauty of the language, and of dreams, stories, feelings". Handwriting goes with the pace of the mind and heart, she says. Isabel Allende's new memoir begins with her daughter's death. But as she explains to Anita Sethi, writing is about life, and the attempt to change it