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2.5 "perplexed, indifferent, what-is-the-fuss-all-about ?!" stars !! I am at a loss as how this book won Chile’s Literary Critics’ Award for Best Novel. Was it a very bad year? Were there no other novels published? Were the critics all first year double majors in post-modern literature and philosophy? I don't get it!!Don't get me wrong...this is not a poor book but I found nothing that interesting, or moving, or interesting, or profound, or interesting, or humorous, or interesting, or meaningful...
What does a resonating journal do? Arrest us in the powerful aura of words? Dispatch us to the comforting cocoon of our memories? Render a blanket of dignity to our failures? Exhort our fledgling dreams to a palpable fruition? Cast a succor net on our isolated struggles? Attest our timidity as a prelude to stronger days?For me, it's essentially about reading about a distant 'me', the identity of this 'me' to be an inhabitant of past corridors or a tenant of future roads being inconsequential. As...
In the end she dies and he remains alone, although in truth he was alone some years before her death, Emilia's death. Let's say that she is called or was called Emilia and that he is called, was called, and continues to be called Julio. Julio and Emilia. In the end Emilia dies and Julio does not die. The rest is literature: I only wanted a local short novel to read between transfers on my recent trip to Chile, and I ended up with this precious gem of a poem in prose, heavy with the memories of
"She and he, Macedonio’s characters, had and lost a little plant of love. Emilia and Julio—who are not exactly characters, though maybe it’s convenient to think of them as characters—have been reading before shagging for months, it is very pleasant, they think, and sometimes they think it at the same time: it is very pleasant, it is beautiful to read and talk about the reading just before tangling legs. It’s like doing exercise.It isn’t always easy to find, in the texts, some impetus, however sm...
BONSAI (2006), Alejandro Zambra's debut novel, is a deceptively simple story of a love affair. A brief novella, in itself, a literary bonsai: the story of Julio and Emilia's love for each other through several years of their lives, cut down to miniature form by means of thoughtful care, meticulous pruning and constant weeding, until the story gets the compact and artistic form which the author has envisioned.Julio and Emilia have a soft spot for deceit in all its forms. They meet when they are u...
A book that reads like a quote on life. A book that starts with a seed and grows into miniature version of a giant tree - an apt metaphor for the content Zambra put in this tiny novella that many authors take volumes to express. "Bonsai" is a fitting title for the story that Zambra narrates and the elegant beauty that is the book itself. We follow Julio and Emilia - the two people who in the span of less than hundred pages became people I was more than acquainted with. Zambra pulls you into the
More of a short story than a novella, but who would spend $13 on a short story? I probably would.In any event, the story's first paragraph is enough to pull even the most reluctant reader in. How's this for a promise?"In the end she dies and he remains alone, although in truth he was alone some years before her death, Emilia's death. Let's say that she is called or was called Emilia and that he is called, was called, and continues to be called Julio. Julio and Emilia. In the end Emilia dies and
As with Multiple Choice, the only other Zambra work I've read, I liked it well enough, just was left kind of wondering what all the fuss is about (since this has won major awards). It is sparse and can easily be read in about an hour, but didn't leave a huge impression on me - but I am curious it was turned into a film, since there doesn't really seem to be much of a plot to warrant such.
A bonsai has to be nurtured and truly loved or else it will die; likewise, unless one does the same thing with human love, that will also die.This is a philosophical, thought provoking novella (so I have a tautology here but I like it even though it’s extraneous as it adds necessary substance to the wording) and I was charmed and delighted by it all.This is not really a novella but a short story and it can be read in little more than an hour. Nevertheless, in spite of its brevity, it runs the ga...
Sparse and witty. Intelligent voice and engaging narrative, with the repetition and non sequiturs evocative of spoken tales. Ending was a bit flat. But maybe even that evokes what really happens, when stories end (or fail to end neatly).As a follow-up note: I was almost through the movie before I realized I had read the book. It all seemed vaguely familiar, but you know, there are only so many narratives in the world these days. And lives can only be pruned in so many dramatic shapes, pruned and...
Πανέμορφο. Διάβασα την αγγλική μετάφραση δυο φορές,υπαρχει κ στα ελληνικά απ´τις εκδόσεις Πατάκη. Ειναι μια μικρή ιστορια για τον έρωτα δυο φοιτητών κ για την αγάπη τους για την λογοτεχνία.“This, then, is a light story that turns heavy. This is the story of two students who are enthusiasts of truth, of scattering sentences that seem true, of smoking eternal cigarettes, and of closing themselves into the intense complacency of those who think they are better, purer than others, than that immense
