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Alejandro Zambra: Bonsái (Bonsai)

So how do we describe this novella? It is cynical, laconic, witty and postmodern. It is about love/ romance and all with a literary undertone.

But it is postmodern. Here are just a few examples. The book is about Julio and, to a lesser extent, Emilia. The book opens with the fact that Emilia has died so we know that this is not going to be a great lifetime romance. We do not learn how she dies till much later. The romance does not last all that long, but Zambra manages to throw in quite a few post modern touches. For example we have them in bed together with Emilia deciding what they are doing is follar which is the Spanish word for to have sexual intercourse but apparently not the Chilean one and she likes to use the Spanish word. We get, of course discussion about various alternative words and must assume that the ones used in the English translation match the Chilean original. Here is more. They both told a first lie to one another and it is the same lie. No, this is not about romance or sex, it is a fact that both claim to have read Proust but neither have done so. They will read it together later, though they abandon it well before the end (page 373), and each will pretend to recognise certain key passages even though we know they have not had read those passages before.

Lists. Post-modernists love lists and we have lots and lots of interesting books and authors mentioned here, many of which you will be familiar with at least by title, though less if you’re not too familiar with Latin American and Spanish authors.

Here is another one. Emilia has a friend, Anita, who was married to a man called Andrés, or Leonardo. Let’s agree that his name was Andrés and not Leonardo..

So back to Julio and Emilia. They are both at a Spanish Syntax II session at the house of two twins. Julio fancied his chances with one of the twins but, of course ends up with Emilia. They both knew each other and both had found something about the other that they disliked. Both were fairly sexually inexperienced, but we learn that in the future, when she is in Madrid, Emilia will, shag quite a bit. Julio’s sexual initiation had been with a woman who had provided the same service to other members of his family. They kept follando in various places tilll Emilia moves in with Anita. Anita does not particularly likeJulio because he has changed her friend. They carry on, taking a lead from various books, including Kafka and Madame Bovary though Chekhov does not work.

Emilia becomes a teacher but at the school where she teaches it is a requirement that the teachers are married so she simply pretends to be married. However, there is a problem. There is a school event which she is expected to attend with her husband. So she borrows her husband from her friend Anita, the aforementioned double named person. What could go wrong? Well, not what you think. He did try to kiss her so she simply punched him in the face and that solves that. However, relationships between the two women were not surprisingly somewhat impaired.

Both Anita and Amelia, separately, ended up in Madrid where things do not go particularly well.

And then there isGazmuri, possibly an alter ego of our author who writes long hand and wants someone to convert his long hand into computer text. Julio offers to do the job. Of course that does not work out either. Perhaps also not surprisingly this novel features a bonsai which is symbolic of a lost love.

By this time, Julio is no longer with Emilia, who, as we know is in Madrid and he is struggling to earn a living. However he does get together with Maria and to impress her, he tells her aboutGazmuri’s novel and when he doesn’t get the task of transcribing it, he pretends that he does and tells Maria about the plot of the novel which of course he has invented. He even writes a manuscript of this invented novel which he shows to Maria to impress her. However, seemingly like all the women he knows she goes off to Madrid.

Does it end? No not really. As we know, Emilia dies. We learn the details and then a year later Julio learns about it. It does seem to have some effect on him and as for Julio, remember, this book is about Julio, rather than anyone else, even though we learn about other people, as for Julio, he is still drifting, no real job, no real girlfriend, not much of a life.
I found this book very clever, decidedly post modern, very witty, and a very short, only eighty-three pages. Zambra has had considerable success in both English and Spanish, and doubtless, other languages and this one is a very enjoyable read.

Publishing history

First published by 2016 by Anagrama
First English translation in 2022 by Fitzcarraldo
Translated by Megan McDowell