During the following weeks, on walks in the park and over pistachio ice cream dipped in chocolate, the rough draft of a family began to be written, but neither of them was sure whether that draft could eventually become a book. Although Gonzalo was the more enthusiastic of the two, they both behaved like the kind of writer who, rather than getting tangled up in paralyzing disquisitions, just keeps barreling ahead, trusting that abundance of material will translate, down the line, into some reaso...

When we think back about books we read a year or longer ago usually what we remember most is not the plot, but the atmosphere. I absolutely loved the warm atmosphere of Chilean Poet, especially the first and the last part. It is about the relationship between Gonzalo, a Chilean poet, and Carla and her son Vicente (Gonzalo's stepson). It explores the theme of “step parenthood”, but casts it in a positive light rather than the negative way in which stepfathers are usually portrayed, and so what we...

4,5If you want to learn more about Chilean poetry and the importance of it in Chili, read this book! If you want to read an excellent book about love, family, (step)father/son relationships: read this book! Zambra's storytelling draws you in, the characters are very likeable; I enjoyed this enormously!Thank you Penguin Random House and Edelweiss for the ARC.

Irrepressible desires of youth are a driving force of poetry…She loved music, she’d been an amateur photographer ever since she was little, and she was always reading some novel or other, but she thought poetry was childish and overblown. Gonzalo, however, like almost everyone, associated poetry with love. He had not won Carla over with poems, but he had fallen in love with her and with poetry almost simultaneously, and it was hard for him to separate them.Soon enough Carla discards Gonzalo and

Bolano has compared the Chilean poetry to his first dog: “When I was lonely he was like father, mother, teacher and brother all in one.” And this novel by a Chilean poet about the Chilean poets echoes this warm sentiment. Quite a few pages of this book is devoted not simply to the poets, but to the quirky, inspirational subculture of their community in Chile. Moreover, what is poetry for? It seems this novel attempts to discuss this question once again. In many cases it is impossible to say but

Chilean Poet is Megan McDowell's engaging translation of Alejandro Zambra's Poeta Chileno, a serviceable story about family relationships, focusing on a stepfather and stepson. The book is fine, as far as these types of books go, although a bit milquetoast for my taste. The pacing is good and the characters likable, so I can see this appealing to a broad audience. The effusive reviews for the work in its original Spanish seem to bear that out. At its heart, this is an exploration of a certain ty...

When my copy of Chilean Poet arrived, I snapped a photo and texted it to Mike Puma’s (GR friends from years back will know) old number like I would have done. We always raced each other to get and read books and Zambra was a favorite for both of us. Whoever has the phone number now texted back a bunch of question marks and I replied “you’re gonna have to deal with this.” I really miss my friend, but I’m glad Im going to be reading our author for him and haunting his old number on his behalf. Hop...

Tourism sites frequently refer to Chile as the land of poets, although the only actual poet they tend to mention’s Neruda. Alejandro Zambra’s novel builds on this association between Chile and poetry, a country in which poetry’s a heroic practice, central to its mythology and a rich source of national pride. His book features two poets Gonzalo, who grew up during the dictatorship, and his stepson Vicente. In the early years of Chile’s democracy in the 1990s, teenager Gonzalo who, like Zambra, ha...

“...He stands there paging through books that he has read before and that once astonished him.“That’s almost all he remembers now, just that he liked these books, that once upon a time they fascinated him. Maybe it’s strange, but that’s how he is with novels, and with fiction in general: he tends to remember isolated phrases and words, specific scenes that his memory distorts, and above all atmospheres, so that if he had to talk about those books he would sound as tentative and unsure as if he w...

It's better to write than not to write. Poetry is subversive because it exposes you, tears you apart. You dare to distrust yourself. You dare to disobey. That’s the idea, to disobey everyone. Disobey yourself, that’s the most important thing. That’s crucial. I don’t know if I like my poems, but I know that if I hadn’t written them I’d be dumber, more useless, more individualistic. I publish them because they’re alive. I don’t know if they’re good, but they deserve to live.

"... He sat down on the curb, leaned against the slender trunk of a plum tree, and lit a cigarette. He felt with absolute certainty that he had lost everything. I've just published a book, the thought. While he smoked and looked at the sky empty of clouds, he thought, joylessly, that he had published a book and he was, finally, a poet, a Chilean poet."Thus we enter part III (Called "How to Be a Chilean Poet") of a very endearing 6-part novel of family, love and writing. A little vulgar and confi...

Finished!!! Loved my time with this one 🥺🥺. Zambra really touched my heart at the end with that last masterful section. That narrator was brilliant. This book surprises you in the best way. Funny and heartwarming. This is a novel with a soul. A love letter to a country, to its literature, and to its artist. Incredible work. Thank you @vikingbooks #partner for the copy.

Set in Santiago, Chile at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, Chilean Poet centers around an aspiring poet named Gonzalo. Gonzalo finds himself reunited with Carla his teenage sweetheart 9 years after the couple first broke up. But now Carla is a mother to a young son named Vincente and soon the trio forms a sort of makeshift family. Although their separate ambitions and fate eventually tear the couple apart, and Gonzalo leaves for New York City, Vincente inherits

"What kinds of poems do you want to write?""True poems. Honest poems, poems that make me change, that transform me. You know?""If you publish a book, you're a poet. Maybe you end up regretting it, but once you publish a book of poems you're screwed, you'll always be a poet."Well, I thought this book was just wonderful. It’s about Chilean poets—two specifically, a stepfather and his stepson. But there are other poets, too—a country of them.I thought it was quite ambitious and impressive how much

A celebratory humorous novel about the life of poets. Alejandro Zambra, a Chilean writer follows the life and career of Gonzalo, a self-described "minor" poet and professor. The other main characters are his partner Clara, her son Vincente and later, as the story progresses, a freelance New York journalist named Pru.Often viewed as a country of poets, Zambra spends some time satirizing this community. When Pru finds herself there she interviews as many poets as possible and surmises:'being a Chi...

Perfect novel.

It's ultimately more a story about the relationship between a step-father and his step-son than it is about poetry. Both of them are poets, though apparently not very good ones. But poetry is always in the background of their lives, giving them definition and meaning. And there are points in their relationship where their lives become poetry, like in the farewell scene where Gonzalo can speak only words of parting, Vicente can speak only words of becoming and neither of them can speak words of l...

4.5/5a super fun read that made me laugh out loud at some points. i loved all of the details about carla, vicente, and gonzalo and when it moved out of part 2 to focus more on their individual lives after their time together i was initially sad bc i loved their dynamic a lot. but i felt like the later sections werent too sentimental and did a good job of honoring that the time had passed but was still precious. i really didnt care abt pru and was unsure of how her part fit into all of it, and i

Beautiful, funny, and insightful book on family, memory, and poetry. Particularly wonderful read to those familiar with Chile and Chilean poetry, of course.

beautiful writing, a little heavy on the machismo/masc energy but a fun read.