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La Vida Privada De Los árboles (2007)

by Alejandro Zambra(Favorite Author)

3.74 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

8433971549 (ISBN13: 9788433971548)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Anagrama

review 1: I read this somewhat surprising novella when I was on a plane the other week, way above the clouds and my mind was full of celestial thoughts as a result of that.It’s interesting how such a simple story of ninety-eight pages, covering an evening with an individual, can sustain one’s interest from the beginning until the end, and all in one sitting.Here we have Julián, a somewhat hesitant person, a professor of literature and an author on Sundays (why not Saturday?), telling a bedtime story to his eight year old step-daughter Daniela, whilst his wife Verónica is away at her drawing class.But this isn’t your typical bedtime story as it is all about the private lives of trees; trees such as the poplar and baobab that have conversations and discuss their daily lives, a... morelso indicating permanency. That was something Julián didn’t have in his life prior to meeting Verónica.His previous relationship with Karla had been a mistake as there was an air of uncertainty about it all with her frequent absences. They seemed to constantly miss each other at home. Julián lovingly tended his bonsai during Karla’s sudden and unexpected absences, and watched his plant for hours. Perhaps he was hoping that it would move? And then he would write but in all this waiting and reflecting he only managed to write:“…an emaciated sheaf of forty-seven pages that he insists on calling a novel”.He thought in depth about his love for Karla:“Julián didn’t want to regain his love, since he had stopped loving her a long time ago. He had stopped loving her one second before he began loving her. It sounds strange, but that’s how he feels: instead of loving Karla, he had loved the possibility of love, and then the imminence of love. He had loved the idea of a form moving beneath dirty white sheets”.I found the above to be an odd paragraph; mental ideas of love versus physical desire.The relationship with Karla ceases when he returns home from work one day and sees her final message to him written in red paint on the living wall room, telling him to get out of her house. He dramatically thought that it had been written in blood.This Julián is certainly a complex individual and so when he succeeds in his relationship with Verónica, he nevertheless has to have something else to worry about. He is content with the family role but he’s now wondering why she hasn’t come home yet and then he thinks about his life, and even imagines how Daniela will be when she becomes an adult.Trees are indeed part of the fabric of our daily lives as seen by their permanence and I have no doubt that this delightful work will also remain in that same category well into the future. The simplicity of the book demonstrates its magical quality and I highly recommend it.
review 2: Llegué a Alejandro Zambra por una curiosidad. Necesitaba un libro para tomarle fotos a la gente leyendo, entré a una librería y me lo llevé. Dada la ligereza del mismo, en un rato de ocio, lo leí de un tirón... Es imposible parar de leer, dada la maestría y sutileza de este autor chileno.Sin ser continuación de "Bonsái", esta historia sucede a la anterior y nos la cuenta Zambra, quien con un lenguaje no exento de humor vuelve a engancharnos con un texto que fluye; que de tan rápido que se va, hasta ganas dan de perseguirlo. Muy recomendable less

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