Playful novel by Alejandro Zambra about poet dreams in Chile ★★★☆☆

“Writing is like caring for a bonsai,” Alejandro Zambra wrote somewhere in his debut novel bonsai (2006), the story of a short love story. With this statement, the Chilean writer gave his calling card. bonsai appeared at the time when Zambra’s compatriot Roberto Bolaño was hoisted on a pedestal with his ambitious peat The Wild Detectives and 2666. I’m doing it differently, Zambra told us. I keep it short and snug. And indeed, bonsai and also The hidden life of trees (2007) and Ways to return home (2011) are more novellas than novels. The world of Zambra’s characters is also small. House, tree and Santiago de Chile, that’s about it. The difference from Bolaño’s globetrotters could not have been greater.

Yet Zambra also has something in common with his compatriot. Like Bolaño, he presents writers as characters and makes his narrators philosophize about the story, about the novel, about writers. But in this respect too, he remains faithful to the bonsai principle and trims this theme in precise patterns.

The hefty scope of Zambra’s fourth novel Almost a father is therefore a surprise. The three predecessors together easily fit in twice. Is Zambra over the bonsai phase? You wouldn’t say it right away, because Almost a father starts even crazier than bonsai. Two adolescents, Carla and Gonzalo, sit on the couch at Carla’s parents’ house afternoon after afternoon. While life goes on around them – the television is on, mother does the housework – they fiddle with each other’s bodies to their heart’s content, under the shelter of a poncho. After an endless run-up, the ‘long-awaited penetration’ finally takes place. It turns out so bad that it heralds the beginning of the end of their relationship.

But Zambra doesn’t cut it short. Ten years later, he let Carla and Gonzalo make a new start. Carla is then a divorced woman with a six-year-old son. That takes some getting used to for Gonzalo, who has no children of his own. And Vicente, the son, is smart. He doesn’t want Gonzalo to read to him, but how does the new stepfather deal with him? Vicente knows what to do: stepfather can cut his toenails.

stepdad

What exactly is a stepfather? That question continues to occupy Gonzalo, even after his relationship with Carla breaks down again. Do you still remain a stepfather after such a divorce? Zambra playfully explores these kinds of issues and, surprisingly, almost without the meta-literary interruptions that somewhat get in the way of the narrative power of his bonsai novels.

But as a building block of Gonzalo’s story, literature does play an important role in Almost a father. The original title – poeta chileno (Chilean poet) – already pointed this out. Because that’s what Gonzalo wants to become: a Chilean poet. And he can’t. He does become a literature teacher. A kind of stepfather of poetry.

Vicente has more talent, Gonzalo concludes when he sees his stepson again years later and the two find each other in their love for poetry. And especially the poetry from Chile, the country that probably has the highest density of poets in the world. Zambra takes a close look at this colorful world in a long, Bolaño-esque portrait gallery. Zambra’s irony is not entirely consistent. “Of course there is opportunism and violence,” he writes, “but also true passion and heroism and staying true to dreams.” And also: ‘poetry (has) a real use (…), words touch, vibrate, heal, comfort, continue working, stay.’

Those are big words that give the impression that Zambra is more devoted to his subject than he often suggests as the narrator of this novel. Or is it exactly the other way around? Does he not dare to fully express his love for poetry and does he hide under a poncho of irony?