extremely compelling! title is accurate. that's all I'm going to say.
I agree with those who label this little book as pretentious, but I guess I don’t mind pretentious as long the author:a) Has something interesting to sayb) Says what he has to say in an interesting wayc) Is interested in transmitting something beyond what he is sayingd) Is not interested in how what...
This is a funny book. It is not like anything else you have ever read. The books is short and the pages are filled with questions, some inane, some inspirational, some insightful, some downright ridiculous and laughable, but hidden within the questions is an investigation of human nature, politics, ...
The story here jumps back and forth between the story and an account of its writing. Back and forth between created characters and the voice of the author as he goes about his life, making decisions about how and when to work on the book, what to keep and what to leave. The result is an engaging n...
Ways of Going Home Author: Alejandro Zambra Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell Genre: Literary Fiction, Latin American Literature, Contemporary Fiction Illustration on title page by Charlotte Strick Setting: Santiago, Chile Published January 2013 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux "It's stran...
Briefly, very briefly: I am sold on Zambra.Even though I delayed reading this one and approached it with some reluctance (that damned publisher’s blurb—but I’ll come back to that), my overall sense of the author and his work was reaffirmed, and if I had to describe Zambra’s writing or storytelling i...
Zambra does a masterful job in this novel giving voice of the experiences of a silent group in Chile -- the generation that grew up under Pinochet's rule, living their childhoods in the shadow of a brutal dictatorship. Zambra reveals the uneasy balance between children's worlds of games and school a...
This is a gem of a short novel. It opens as a professor and writer, Julián, is telling his stepdaughter Daniela a bedtime story while waiting for his wife Verónica to return from an art class. The bedtime story is a sweet, humorous and quirky story about two trees who are friends. As you read on, yo...
This is a charming novella that at first doesn't seem to have much to it, but it sneaks up on you. Julián is a young professor and writer (apparently the same narrator as Zambra's earlier Bonsai); "The Private Life of Trees" is a story he tells his stepdaughter Daniela one evening as they wait for h...
A very brief review of a truly wonderful book.Sometimes, with experimental fiction, I’m left puzzling over whether my reaction to the book constitutes an experimental success or failure—whether my ‘feelings’ about a title are adequate to the author’s intent (I know, I know)—whether I’ve lived up. Wi...
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