{"id":10791,"date":"2014-02-06T14:05:18","date_gmt":"2014-02-06T18:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=10791"},"modified":"2014-02-06T14:05:18","modified_gmt":"2014-02-06T18:05:18","slug":"alejandro-zambra-ways-of-going-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2014\/02\/06\/alejandro-zambra-ways-of-going-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Alejandro Zambra: Ways of Going Home<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alejandro Zambra has been making a splash in English reading circles over the past few years with translations of his short books Bonsai<\/em> and\u00a0The Private Lives of Trees<\/em>.\u00a0In 2010 he was one of the twenty-two writers featured in Granta 113: The Best\u00a0of Young Spanish-Language<\/em> Novelists<\/em>. It was there that I first read him and in fact first read a portion of what was to become this book, Ways of Going Home<\/em> (Formas de volver a casa<\/em>, 2011; tr. from the Spanish by Megan McDowell, 2013).<\/p>\n

\"Review
Review copy courtesy of FSG.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ways of Going Home<\/em> tells two stories in four fleeting chapters. The first begins with an earthquake in 1984. The protagonist, unnamed, is nine years\u00a0old (as was Zambra at that time). Augusto Pinochet had been in power for over ten years, since the coup d’\u00e9tat on September 11, 1973,\u00a0and he\u00a0would\u00a0continue to be the dictator\u00a0for six more.<\/p>\n

Much of Roberto Bola\u00f1o’s fiction deals with Pinochet’s time in power; indeed, Bola\u00f1o had personal confrontation with the regime: after the coup he was arrested on suspicion of being a terrorist and was in custody for eight days, only to be rescued by prison guards who happened to be former classmates (see his story “Dance Card” for a fictional account).\u00a0It should be noted that doubts have arisen as to whether this ever happened at all; nevertheless, Bola\u00f1o’s fiction gets up close and personal with the Pinochet regime. In contrast, the characters in Ways of Going Home<\/em>, though\u00a0living directly under the thumb of Pinochet, don’t have any of those kinds of encounters. This novel is, in part, a rumination on those children who were relatively well off, who\u00a0grew up\u00a0hearing stories of kidnappings and torture but who never knew anyone who suffered in such a way. It’s about one of those children growing up and becoming a writer, and wondering just what he has to write about.<\/p>\n

Back to that first story: the young protagonist and his family gather with the neighborhood after the 1984 earthquake. His neighbor, Ra\u00fal, who has always been single, is with two people the young boy has never seen, a woman and a young girl, maybe a few years older than he. He is shocked when over the ensuing days he finds this girl, Claudia, following him around. Finally, they speak, and Claudia eventually asks him to spy on Ra\u00fal, who, she says, is her uncle. Intrigued, the young boy does as she asks. For the most part, it’s boring, but every once in a while he sees someone new enter Ra\u00fal’s home, and he duly reports\u00a0to Claudia. One day, Ra\u00fal packs up and leaves. He is further surprised to find that Claudia has left. He has no idea what he’s been doing.<\/p>\n

The mystery is interesting, and we certainly have our own suspicions about what’s going on at Ra\u00fal’s home. The young boy wonders about politics, but, again, he’s having what we might consider a relatively normal childhood. We might end this section wondering if the narrative has been\u00a0following around the wrong character: “If there was anything to learn, we didn’t learn it.”<\/p>\n

The second section begins the second story, comprised of the\u00a0journal entries of a\u00a0relatively young writer. It turns out, he’s writing the book we began in section one. Though the writer and the young boy share biographical details (with Zambra, aside from each other), he says Claudia is\u00a0pure fiction:<\/p>\n

I pass the time thinking about Claudia as if she existed, as if she had existed. At first I\u00a0 questioned even her name. But it’s the name 90 percent of the women of my generation share. It’s right that she should have that name. I never get tired of the sound, either. Claudia.<\/span><\/p>\n

I like that my characters don’t have last names. It’s as relief.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As we read the writer’s thoughts, we see him struggling with the story as well as with an ex-girlfriend he hopes will continue to be his girlfriend, Eme. The novelist also struggles with his own, rather unremarkable past. Here he sits, trying to write something significant about life under Pinochet, but he knows he was relatively safe. He didn’t know anyone who died. He was always on the fringe, always a secondary character in this narrative. He might want to tell someone else’s story, but he feels that “we always end up telling our own.”<\/p>\n

This sounds like a tricky novel — most metafiction is — but Zambra succeeds at presenting both stories (we do return to the young boy and Claudia, though they’ve grown up) with a clarity born out of his brevity. That’s not to suggest all answers are explained. While I know nothing about Zambra’s own life, I get the sense here that even if he did not experience the same things these characters did, he’s exploring the same themes as they relate to his own life — and how can we ever answer those questions?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alejandro Zambra has been making a splash in English reading circles over the past few years with translations of his short books Bonsai and\u00a0The Private Lives of Trees.\u00a0In 2010 he was one of the twenty-two writers featured in Granta 113: The Best\u00a0of Young Spanish-Language Novelists. It was there that I first read him and in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[482],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-10791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alejandro-zambra"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-2O3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10791"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10898,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10791\/revisions\/10898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10791"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}