The Private Lives of Trees by Alejandro Zambra
My rating: 4/5 cats
what is even better than this book??
her review is what soothed my terror when i realized i did not have enough book left to carry me through both my lunch break AND my subway ride home, and instead of freaking out (much), i calmly carried a copy of this book to the green room and read it on my lunch break, leaving the riveting conclusion of the iron duke for the subway ride home. phew. crisis averted…
since i already owned it and it is an open letter publication, and i have read another book by this guy, it was inevitable that i would have read it someday, but i want to stress again how great oriana’s review of it is.
this is a tiny little book, but it is very full. it captures perfectly the range of emotions a person goes through when waiting for someone to come home. the forgiving early shades of “something must have come up,” the later genuine concerns that “violence must have come to them,” the much much later “holy shit, they are totally having an affair and are laughing at me behind my back while i wait here like a fool.” but this is not a comic novel; it is not a novel of relationships, either. it is just a novel that sort of happens without fireworks or fanfare; just a quiet episode that blossoms into something else at the end which is also quiet and contemplative and all part of the same diversionary tactic of filling the waiting-time. it is quite lovely.
and that is all that needs to be said.
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