Isabel Allende has lived in exile following the 1973 Chilean coup which deposed her Godfather, socialist president Salvador Allende. First spending nearly fifteen years in Venezuela, where Allende composed The House of the Spirits, she later moved to San Rafael, California, where she currently resides. Allende's status as a political exile has had a profound on her literary work, particularly her first novel, The House of the Spirits. In a 1992 interview, Allende stated, "My first book-The House of the Spirits was born, was triggered I'd say, by nostalgia, by the desire to the recover the world that I had lost after I had to leave my country and live in exile" (Crystall, Elyse, et al.).
This portion of Allende's biography gives us a context in which to understand the continuous themes of loss and isolation within The House of the Spirits. Understanding the novel as a lament or a love-letter to a lost home provides insight into not just the obvious political events and themes within the text, but the psychologies of individual characters. I would argue that we could view someone like Clara or Ferula as isolated or disconnected from others around them, as "not at home" within the world of the text. Remembering that Allende is writing as exile lends us a greater understanding of these thematic elements.