“A story that’s so weird, it has to be true. Two sisters unite to survive a traumatic upbringing-from absentee parents to a wilderness camp for troubled teens-in this “relentless and spooky” (Joy Williams) debut from an essential new voice.

Exploring how we choose our families and how we betray them, and what it means to be a man in relationships-a partner, father, stepfather, teacher, lover, writer, and friend-it is a bold and brilliant new work by one of the most important writers of our time.

In Chilean Poet, Alejandro Zambra chronicles with enormous tenderness and insight the small moments-sexy, absurd, painful, sweet, profound-that make up our personal histories. Will it also lead Vicente and Gonzalo back to each other? Pru’s research leads her into this eccentric community-another kind of family, dysfunctional but ultimately loving. When, at eighteen, Vicente meets Pru, an American journalist literally and figuratively lost in Santiago, he encourages her to write about Chilean poets-not the famous, dead kind, your Nerudas or Mistrals or Bolaños, but rather the living, striving, everyday ones. Though Gonzalo takes his books when he goes, still, Vicente inherits his ex-stepfather’s love of poetry. Soon the three form a happy sort-of family-a stepfamily, though no such word exists in their language.Įventually, their ambitions pull the lovers in different directions-in Gonzalo’s case, all the way to New York. Though their desire for each other is still intact, much has changed: among other things, Carla now has a six-year-old son, Vicente. “Zambra's books have long shown him to be a writer who, at the sentence level, is in a world all his own.” -Juan Vidal, NPR.orgĪ writer of “startling talent” ( The New York Times Book Review), Alejandro Zambra returns with his most substantial work yet: a story of fathers and sons, ambition and failure, and what it means to make a familyĪfter a chance encounter at a Santiago nightclub, aspiring poet Gonzalo reunites with his first love, Carla. “A tender and funny story about love, family and the peculiar position of being a stepparent… broadens the author’s scope and quite likely his international reputation.” - Los Angeles Times

Moons of madness bookshelf puzzle