A short, emotional novella about a bond between a stepfather and his daughter, this book reminded me of 'Foster' by Claire Keegan. I'm sure it will be interesting to read them back to back. This is a little bit more experimental, but it still punches hard. I think the last words will stay with me for a long time.

I don't have much to add to the many great reviews here, but I am very glad I finally took two hours to read The Private Lives of Trees. It was a short but beautiful reading experience.

It is a simple, delicate, sweet and melancholic story (with touches of metafiction) about Julian, who is the stepfather of little Daniela and waits for his wife Veronica, who is late to return from her drawing class.

Julian is a literature professor and writer and distracts Daniela with stories he invents about two trees chatting in a park.

The atmosphere Zambra creates is his strongest point for me and it reminded me a lot of Chilean Poet. There are many themes that come back, in particular stepfatherhood. I can understand people who say these stories are a bit simplistic, but I enjoy them!

Such a gentle novel, one that can be devoured in a single evening. What is it about? Julian tells his 8 year old step-daughter, Daniela, a bedtime story while they wait for her mother, Veronica, to come home from her art class. His story is about trees who have been friends for years talking over their day. Julian is a teacher and one day a week a writer and while Daniela sleeps he remembers his pursuit of Veronica and his previous relationship. He imagines why Veronica has not returned, what might have befallen her. He imagines Daniela as an older child, a teenager, an adult. This book is about relationships, those people that touch our lives and have an impact - large or small. It is also about family - what sort of father will Julian be to Daniela - hopefully a better one than her real father. We all wait for Veronica because as Julian says - the book continues until she comes home. This is one of those books that we all need sometimes, a book to make us pause and breathe.

Set over a single night we enter into the mind and thoughts of Julian as he waits for his wife Veronica to return from her art class. As he waits he starts to feel anxious. What if she never comes back? What if he’s lost her? His thoughts circle round and round as he reflects on the past and the present and wonders what might happen in the future. It’s a quiet and reflective book, written with insight and gentleness, but I didn’t really engage with Julian and didn’t much care what happened. A small slice of domestic life but ultimately pretty inconsequential.

<b>Being there or not is the question</b>

We start with the trees who are solid, stationary and do not move much but then Zambra continues with us. Humans who do move, a lot, going in and out of each others lives, building families and leaving them, finding families and continuing them.

What will Julian do, will he be there? Zambra projects forward and backwards with this question. Why do some relationships survive and others do not? Will Julian be there for Daniela? Where is Veronica? Why should we care? I think I cared because it is a question we too must ask, will that person be there for me, will I be there for him, her, whoever. Why am I there for one person and not for the other? Good questions.

Excellently done. Another excellent Fitzcarraldo.

An ARC kindly provided by author/publishers via Netgalley.

Zambra is an author that I ought to love but, having now read 5 of his books, just doesn't work for me.

Reasons I ought to love him: he's steeped in Latin American literature, particularly poetry; there is a playful meta nature to his work; he's published by one of my favourite UK publishers and translated by a brilliant translator; and he writes (Chilean Poet the dishonorable exception) wonderfully compact books - as the narrator of this book does as well:

He has just finished a very short book that nevertheless took several years to write. First, he accumulated material: he wrote nearly three hundred pages, but then gradually reversed course, discarding ever more passages, as if instead of adding to the story he wanted to subtract or erase it. The result was meagre: an emaciated sheaf of forty-seven pages that he insists on calling a novel.

(For me a sheaf of forty-seven page sounds like a perfect length novel)

BUT ... something doesn't work and I think it is because his prose is deliberately flat and his stories are of 30-something angst that just doesn't grab me, with central male characters that are, per James Wood's NewYorker profile "spectatorial, somewhat literary (i.e., always “writing” something), hovering on the edge of things, passionate in love but destined to lose what he loves, and thus fatalistic and defensively unserious."

In this novel this role is played by Julián, a teacher by day and writer by night, aged 30 and living for 3 years with a woman called Verónica and her now 8 yo daughter Daniela. As the story opens, Julián is telling Daniela a story, one of a series he has made up about conversation between two trees about being a tree, while they wait for her mother to return.

"Julián lulls the little girl to sleep with ‘The Private Lives of Trees’, a series of stories he makes up to tell her at bedtime. The protagonists are a poplar tree and a baobab who, at night, when no one is watching, talk about photosynthesis, squirrels, or the many advantages of being trees and not people or animals or, as they put it, stupid hunks of cement. Daniela is not his daughter, but it is hard for him not to think of her that way. It’s been three years since Julián joined the family.
...
This is not a normal night, at least not yet. It’s still not completely certain that there will be a next day, since Verónica isn’t back yet from her drawing class. When she returns, the novel will end. But as long as she is gone, the book will continue. The book goes on until she returns, or until Julián is sure that she isn’t going to return. For now, Verónica is absent from the blue room, where Julián lulls the little girl to sleep with a story about the private lives of trees."

And over 70 pages, as the night proceeds and Verónica still doesn't return, the story has Julián looking back on his pursuit of and relationship with Verónica, both of their previous relationships, and wondering what might have delayed her into the early hours. He also thinks about his aforementioned novel about a similar "spectatorial, somewhat literary" protagonist, and which heavily features a Bonsai tree, a nod to Zambra's own debut novel Bonsaï (although Julián's novel is different to Zambra's) and the different approaches he might have taken to compiling it, for example by assembling overheard conversation from the bar beneath their flat instead: There would surely be more life in those accidental pages than in the book he was writing. But instead of being content with the stories that destiny put at his disposal, Julian remained fixated on his bonsai. There's also a section where he imagines Daniela's later life, and how perhaps when she is 30 she may read his book.

And ... well that's it really. I'm not sure what else to say - 2.5 stars, rounded to 3 as I rounded Bonsai down.

3.5. A strange little book, my first Zambra as I've continually failed to find a copy of Chilean Poet. Clocking in at 80 pages exactly, it can be read in an afternoon, really, though my reading was staggered either side of work. The novel is framed around the narrator waiting for his stepdaughter's mother to return for the night. It is even said, something like, The novel can end when she returns. Coming to the end one does feel this like a little timid but strangely powerful wave, like the sort that bowl you over when you're sitting playfully within the first foot of seawater. At once it's forgettable in a way (I have a tricky relationship with short novels, I must admit, I'm in love with sprawlers), but also poignant. Now, even more so, my look for more Zambra continues. This is published by Fitzcarraldo in February next year and I recommend it as an afternoon's read. Thanks to Fitzcarraldo for the advance copy to review.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5139049801

I don't think I've read anything published by Fitzcarraldo Educations that I didn't like. The Private Lives of Trees is no exception. It's a short novel that is thoughtful, intriguing and witty in its depiction of the central figure, Julián, telling his stepdaughter a bedtime stories (about the private lives of trees) to his stepdaughter, while waiting for his wife to come home. As he does so, he moves backwards and forwards in time, reflecting on his life, relationships and failures as a lecturer and writer. At one point he or the narrator (it is not clear and does not need to be clear) sums his life up as: 'His true calling is to create words and forget them amid the noise'. But that is also ironic because the novel's gentle, probing curiosity stays with you for days after you finish it. I may read it again. Everyone should really.

It is late and Verónica, Julián’s wife, is not yet home from art class. Julián, a professor for six days a week, a writer on Sunday, lulls his stepdaughter Daniela to sleep with improvised stories about the unlikely friendship and surreal conversations between a poplar tree and a baobab. As the night progresses, Julián becomes increasingly convinced that Verónica will not be returning home. He muses on their relationship, their past, but also Daniela’s future – which might very possibly be without her mother.

Alejandro Zambra’s novella, beautifully translated by Megan McDowell, is based on a banal premise which, in a world of smartphones and instant messages and chats, is also rather difficult to believe. Yet, this is a strangely intriguing work, propelled by an underlying sense of playful humour. Consider this passage, which is a good example of the gently ironical narrative voice:

"Then came the phone calls back and forth, Verónica’s recriminations, Fernando’s convoluted explanations and the friendly maneuverings of Julián, who, as usual, found himself obliged to act as their mediator. He said to Fernando in a conciliatory tone: You know how Verónica is. Which wasn’t true by any means – Fernando knew how to confront difficult clients, he knew how to negotiate good prices and he even knew how to play a little Heitor Villa-Lobos on the guitar, but he certainly didn’t know how Verónica was. He never got to know her, since their marriage lasted barely three months, or almost a hundred days, as Fernando often specified...
The novella’s “playfulness” is also evident in its meta-literary structure. This is a novel about stories – not just the stories about the “private lives of trees” which Julián makes up for Daniela, but also the personal history/ies of the protagonists, the unfinished novel which Julián wants to write, and the imagined story of adult Daniela, which starts off as Julián’s fantasy as he waits for Verónica to come home, but ultimately threatens to derail the narrative."

I found this an enjoyable book and an appetising introduction to an author whose works I will look out for.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-private-lives-of-trees-by-alejandro.html

I'll say first that this very short novella/ novel? makes me want to read more by this writer.

He certainly uses words sparingly but the whole is nevertheless interesting. The story, such as it is, starts with Julien waiting for his wife, Veronica to come home. As he waits he writes (or imagines the story) and when she returns the story will end. He tells a story that evolves into different stories - telling his stepdaughter bedtime stories about trees, imagining her adult life, imagining what will happen if Veronica never comes home.

I found myself (oddly as Daniela does) not wanting to rush through this book so I stopped every few pages to move around the room, do some housework, make a coffee. I'm not entirely sure why bit it seemed obvious that I shouldn't read this work as a story bit rather as a series of observations and imaginings. I'm sure I'm not explaining myself very well however it is a delight to read and I'd recommend it to readers who enjoy Auster (don't listen to Julien who doesn't read Auster) as it certainly has echoes of that style.

I'd definitely read more by Alejandro Zambra. His work intrigues me.
Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

The Private Lives of Trees is an intriguing short novel by Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra, the central premise of which is that a man tells his young stepdaughter a series of stories about trees while the girl waits for her mother to return home. The mother's whereabouts are unknown and as the night goes on, the stepfather looks back on the events that have led him to become involved in the mother and her daughter's lives as well as imagining his stepdaughter's future life.

I found this an immersive and beguiling read; it is frequently playful and whimsical but also unsettling. It packs a lot into its very slender page count and much remains unsaid. I don't know that I understood everything the first time round but I feel that it is a novel which will reward careful re-readings. It is rich in the allusions it draws - to Chilean politics, to ecology, to writers like Borges and Auster - and credit must also go to Megan McDowell for the translation which reads beautifully.

Thank you to Fitzcarraldo Editions and NetGalley for sending me an ARC to review.

3.5 rounded up

A brief read with an ostensibly sweet premise - a man telling his stepdaughter a bedtime story whilst he waits for her mother to come home - this packed more of an emotional punch than I expected, and achieved a fair bit despite its brief page count. I found this to be quite different and more satisfying read when compared to the other novel of Zambra's that I've read (Multiple Choice), I must check out more of the author's work.