Duly noted, although as a woman of only middling bravery, I myself was not scared by Maya's story, mostly because I didn't believe a word of it. It's not that the sequence of events isn't reasonable for a girl on a downward spiral — spurred by the death from cancer of her beloved grandfather — but that the voice is so implausible. The hyper-articulate present-tense Maya who is prone to old-fashioned language (she notes the "lapidary" phrasing of her scuzzy Vegas boss) is completely at odds with the passive victim in the flashbacks. Maya may be a lively character, but she never feels remotely real.
Daniel, who conveniently happens to have just finished a psychiatric residency in Seattle, tells her she has abandonment issues (right before he licks her "like candy"). He might not have needed a degree to come up with this theory; when Maya was just a few days old, her mother, a Danish air hostess, dropped Maya off with Nini and Popo, and renounced her parental rights. Maya's father, a pilot, visited regularly but mostly left the parenting to his saintly stepfather and firebrand mother. Nini, the book's most vivid character, is somewhat distracted by her activism among the Berkeley do-gooders, but Popo, a dreamy African-American astronomer who oozes Morgan Freeman-style fabulousness from every pore, was always there for Maya, until his untimely demise.
In terms of the outrageous and/or harrowing circumstances she puts her heroine in, Allende could almost be borrowing from the wild adventures on drug-themed cable series like Breaking Bad or Weeds, but without the sense of irony. Maya's recovery from drug addict to chatty, affectionate teen may be just another magical-realist miracle for the famed author of The House of the Spirits. Some of the character's incongruity likely stems from the fact that this is the first time Allende has tried writing in a youthful, contemporary voice.
“ Maya may be a lively character, but she never feels remotely real.