"The Private Lives of Trees" by Alejandro Zambra *****

> Open Letter Series
> Chilean author

> Setting: somewhere in Chile, story takes place over the course of one night spent wondering if his wife will come home or not

> Characters: 1) Julian, a writer and stepfather 2)Victoria, his wife, for whom he spends one very long night waiting 3) Daniela, his stepdaughter, for whom he creates stories about the private lives of trees until she sleeps each night 4)Karla, Julian's former girlfriend

> Epigraphs: 1) "I have no childhood memories.", Georges Perec 2) "...like the private lives of trees or of castaways.", Andres Anwandter

> p.24...."What do you do?" "I have dandruff.".....funny imagining

> p.24..."No one can live without exaggerating a little. If there are in fact stages in Julian's life, they would have to be expressed according to an index of exaggeration. Until he was ten years old he exaggerated very little, almost never. From ten to sixteen his pretension steadily increased. From eighteen onward he became an expert in the most varied forms of hyperbole."

> p.25....He has just finished a very short book; nevertheless, it took several years to write. At first he gathered materials; he accumulated almost three hundred pages; but he gradually reversed course, throwing more and more away, as if instead of adding stories he wanted to subtract them or erase them."

> p.28..."But instead of being content with the stories that destiny put at his disposal, Julian remained fixated on his bonsai."..........parallel between bonsai and his life....also, Zambra has written a novella, entitled, "Bonsai".

> Very funny bit when Julian's friends tell him that he has been reading too much Paul Auster, one of my all-time favorite authors.

> p.33......"It would be undoubtedly better to fall to the floor laughing, or construct an elegant and disdainful sneer. It would be better to close the book, close the books, and to face, all at once, not life, which is very big, but the fragile armor of the present."

> p.38..."In the artificial light of the present, his life with Karla appears to him like a cloud, like a lagoon. He thinks of her as a stopping-place, countryside contemplated from the window of a slow-moving train."

> p.39...."He had stopped loving her one second before he began loving her. It sounds strange, but that's how he feels; instead of loving Karla, he had loved the possibility of love, and then the imminence of love. He had loved the idea of a form moving beneath dirty white sheets."

> p.42...."At the end of a cold night of writing, Julian decided to stop filling pages with diffuse and indecipherable stories; he would write, instead, the diary of a bonsai, a painstaking registry of the tree's growth. It seemed simple. Each afternoon, when he got home, he would record every change, no matter how tiny, that the tree may have undergone while he was out....."

> p.67..."heart of lemon balm for when my sorrows grow, the flowers of my garden must be my caretakers."...lyric from a song Julian's mother used to sing

> p.68...."Shoulder our portion of the night, bear our part of the night, carry our portion of the night, endure the darkness"...verse from Emily Dickinson which comes to Julian as he tries to weather the long night

> p.75...."She knows that very soon Ernesto won't come back. She imagines herself disconcerted, then furious, and finally invaded by a decisive calm.. It's all right, there was no commitment, as it should be: one loves in order to stop loving, and one stops loving in order to start loving others, or to end up alone, for a while or forever. That is the law. The only law.".....Julian is imagining Daniela's future if Victoria does not return.

> p.76..."Focus your gaze on the current: the bridge moves forward, we move forward, the water is still, it comes to a halt."....Julian on a bridge with Daniela, metaphor for transition?

> p.82..."How can those places they have decided to leave in darkness be lit? After a difficult time, they've reached a non-aggression pact, achieving the indirect complicity of those whose lives are connected only by a thread. Now they talk, of course they talk, and not in a question-and-answer style. It is not an interrogation. it is, properly, a conversation. The surface feels good to them. They like to play at the sport of spending time together."...Julian imagines Daniela as a young adult speaking with her natural father, with whom she only lived for six months of her first year of life......reminiscent of many relationships in life, I think.

> p.83...."But then she thinks that this is the book her father should write: the book of stories it would be better not to tell anyone, not to air, to carry to the grave; a book of confessions that wouldn't say anything to anyone, which no one would consider valuable. The important thing would be to have saved the breath he uses to tell them.".....Daniela's imagined thoughts after Julian imagines her natural father telling her inappropriate stories

> p.95..."He never wanted to be a doctor, much less a gym teacher. He didn't even want to be a literature professor, not ever. He wanted - wants- to be a writer, but being a writer is not exactly being someone.".....interesting

> p.95..."It is 7:50 in the morning. Less than an hour ago, Julian decided that the future must begin. 'This is the next day,' he thought, and he made the coffee.....".


> LibraryThing Review: How can an author pack so much into a novella? That is the question I am left with after reading "The Private Lives of Trees". The author takes us through one long night suffered by Julian, a writer and stepfather, who is waiting for his wife to come home. I won't tell if she does or not, and frankly, it is almost irrelevant. The reader is allowed access to the stream of thoughts, feelings, imaginings, hopes, history, and fears of one man for one night. His ponderings are the stuff of being human, vulnerable, angry, sad, and hopeful. Oh yes......the private lives of trees is what Julian calls the stories he tells his beloved stepdaughter at bedtime every night until she sleeps.....