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Alejandro Zambra's Ways of Going Home begins with an earthquake, seen through the eyes of an unnamed nine-year-old boy who lives in an undistinguished middleclass housing development in a suburb of Santiago, Chile. When the neighbors camp out overnight, the protagonist gets his first glimpse of Claudia, an older girl who asks him to spy on her uncle Raúl.
In the second section, the protagonist is the writer of the story begun in the first section. His father is a man of few words who claims to be apolitical but who quietly sympathized-to what degree, the author isn't sure-with the Pinochet regime. His reflections on the progress of the novel and on his own life-which is strikingly similar to the life of his novel's protagonist-expose the raw suture of fiction and reality.
Ways of Going Home switches between author and character, past and present, reflecting with melancholy and rage on the history of a nation and on a generation born too late-the generation which, as the author-narrator puts it, learned to read and write while their parents became accomplices or victims. It is the most personal novel to date from Zambra, the most important Chilean author since Roberto Bolaño.
In the second section, the protagonist is the writer of the story begun in the first section. His father is a man of few words who claims to be apolitical but who quietly sympathized-to what degree, the author isn't sure-with the Pinochet regime. His reflections on the progress of the novel and on his own life-which is strikingly similar to the life of his novel's protagonist-expose the raw suture of fiction and reality.
Ways of Going Home switches between author and character, past and present, reflecting with melancholy and rage on the history of a nation and on a generation born too late-the generation which, as the author-narrator puts it, learned to read and write while their parents became accomplices or victims. It is the most personal novel to date from Zambra, the most important Chilean author since Roberto Bolaño.
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Reviews
"Even IKEA doesn't make so much of so little space as does this young Chilean novelist. His latest book revolves around a quartet of chapters, woven around one thread about a young boy growing up in the Pinochet years and another of the novelist writing his story. In many ways, the book recalls the miniature roominess Philip Roth achieved in his great novel, The Ghost Writer. The stories we tell imagine us as much as us them, Zambra reminds, with the power and intensity of a writer who grew up in the shadow of a terrible war."
John Freeman, The Boston Globe
"Funny, contemplative, and quietly moving, Ways of Going Home pulls off the intoxicating trick of making the world feel smaller in its familiar touchstones found in a time of unique tragedy."
Chris Barton, The Los Angeles Times
"[Zambra's novels] are written with startling talent. And Zambra's latest novel represents, I think, his deepest achievement . . . 'We go home,' Zambra writes, 'and it's as if we were returning from war, but from a war that isn't over.' This is the giant, poignant condition staged by the novel's playful doubleness--the way the best conjuring trick is the one where you're shown how it's done, which in no way contradicts your belief that what you've seen is magic."
Adam Thirlwell, The New York Times Book Review