The Modern Novel

Alejandro Zambra: La vida privada de los árboles (The Private Lives of Trees)

Julián is married to Verónica. It is a second marriage for both. In both cases, their first marriage was not a great success. She has a daughter by her previous marriage called Daniela.
Daniela’s father is called Fernando. Daniela compares the two men and, on the whole,Julián comes out ahead though Fernando is better looking. In an authorial comment, we learn that the two men are not enemies and that, on the whole, there are no enemies in this book.

Verónica is at at her drawing class. She had studied art seriously. However, the arrival of Daniela and the fact that she didn’t really fit in with the arty people and the rich kids meant that she gave it up, but has now taken it up going to drawing classes. Julián teaches literature at four different universities. In an acerbic comment by our author he points out that though he does not know Italian he teaches Italian poetry. To add fuel to the fire our author points out that there are many Chileans teaching English literature though they do not know English. Yes, our author is something of a cynic.

Julián is telling Daniela a story about the private life of trees. In particular we hear from an oak tree in which two people are carved an image of their friendship and the oak and some other trees feel this is an unacceptable intrusion. We will follow other stories he tells about the private lives of trees though to a great extent, Daniela is asleep while he tells he the stories.

More authorial intrusion: ,it’s still not completely certain that there will be a next day, since Verónica isn’t back yet from her drawing class. When she returns, the novel will end. the book goes on until she returns, or until Julián is sure that she isn’t going to return. He tries to speculate about what has caused her delay and imagines that she has had a puncture and she’s trying to change the tyre while people drive past and do not stop to help her. As the night wears on, he gets more depressive about the matter and thinks she might be having an affair. Whatever the case he cannot of course leave Daniela to go and look for her.

Duringn this long wait, while Daniela is sleeping, he ruminates. He ruminates about his past life with Karla, which at least from his point of view and from what we hear, was very grim. We learn how he met.Verónica. She was working as a pastry chef and he ordered cakes from her, pretending that there was some family event. He ended .up eating the cake himself.

But now he is alone with his sleeping stepdaughter. He smokes, he watches an Italian football match. He thinks about his life. He has just turned thirty which made him somewhat glum but fully accepts the fact that his previous chaotic life has now settled down. However, he doesn’t worry about it though. Did he make the right, professional choice or should he have been a dentist, a geologist or a meteorologist. In another witty comment these days.But his true calling, he thinks now, is to have dandruff. He imagines himself answering that way: Profession?
I have dandruff.

However, he is also a writer. He is trying to write a book which may be about a man growing a bonsai. Our author’s first book was, of course,Bonsái (Bonsai). It is all a bit complicated. Is it a novel? Is it a collection of stories? Is it too long? Is it too short? He keeps on rewriting it and does not seem to be making a huge amount of progress. Of course our hero has his own bonsai but, with his various travels it has not fared very well. It hugely resented the changes of address. Yes, plants and trees in this book have minds of their own.

He also thinks of his family which he does not seem to have got on very well with. They played Monopoly when he was a child and the father always won . when Karla kicked him out out it never occurred to him to go and live with them for awhile.

But he also moves to the future. This is presumably a speculative future of Daniela’s life, but the way it was written it is as though it is what is actually going to happen to her. In particular it concerns her stepfather’s. novel which she does not read till she is 30 and then only when prompted by a visit to her actual father. We now learn what it is about – It’s a love story, nothing all that extraordinary: two people who, deliberately and naively, build a parallel world that, naturally, soon collapses. . We follow her future career. At this stage We do not know what has happened to her mother,
. Daniela thinks about her mother,,who is alive, or is dead. .

I found this a fascinating book, not just because of the fact that at least some of the time we are not entirely sure what is going on and, indeed, nor do some of the characters know what’s going on but the oddities, such as the author telling us in advance what may or may not be happening and having stories about the trees, behaving as humans all makes a fascinating account of what on the face of it is a relatively straightforward story of a family.

Publishing history

First published by 2007 by Anagrama
First English English translation in 2022 by by Open Letter
Translated by Megan McDowell