Sunday book pick: The long hours of an endless night in ‘The Private Lives of Trees’
Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra’s novel ‘La vida privada de los árboles’ was translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell in 2010.
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When she returns, the novel will end. But as long as she is gone, the book will continue.
Chilean writer Alejandra Zambra’s 2007 novel La vida privada de los árboles was translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell as The Private Lives of Trees and first published in 2010 and then again in 2023 by Fitzacarraldo Editions.
In a novella of no more than 100 pages and no longer than one night, Zambra tells the story of Julián, a writer-teacher trying to put his eight-year-old stepdaughter Daniela to sleep while her mother has yet to return from her art class. As the night deepens, Juliàn is convinced that his wife Verónica won’t ever come home. Whatever the reason for it might be, he and Daniela, stranded in their three-bedroom apartment, must make the small hours pass till she’s back.
A long night
He begins the night by telling Daniela a story, “The Private Lives of Trees”, featuring a bonsai poplar tree and a baobab in conversation. The plot is not a coincidence – Julián is writing a 300-plus page novel about a man who spends his days tending to his bonsai plants, which sounds very similar to Zambra’s debut novel Bonsai (1997). He writes on Sundays and brutal editing has trimmed the novel...
