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A review by briandice
The Private Lives of Trees by Alejandro Zambra
5.0
When I travel taking photographs of trees is one of my favorite things to do.
Colorado 2006
Life is a huge album for creating an instantaneous past, with loud and definite colors.
A single tree, a private tree, is a visual anomaly. Without others, they can look...
Lonely
Maasai Mara 2010
Bashful
Athens 2009
or even, like they might eat you
Kilkenny 2008
In San Francisco, we even point out a tree in its state of alone-ness
Alejandro Zambra's beautiful novella reminds the reader how very much like trees we humans are. It is entirely possible to live a private and solitary life, but is that really living? We watch the world through the protagonist Julián's eyes: we understand his need for others - he mirrors our lives. When he decides to care for a bonsai the allegory to a solitary human existence isn't lost on us. It is what happens when Julián decides he wants to surround himself with others, his own personal copse, that we see him bloom.
Solitude has turned against her.
Zambra writes perfectly that we may be a world of lonely atoms, but we need each other. Is this what Le Guin meant when she titled a book The Word for World is Forest?
Washington 2006
Colorado 2006
Life is a huge album for creating an instantaneous past, with loud and definite colors.
A single tree, a private tree, is a visual anomaly. Without others, they can look...
Lonely
Maasai Mara 2010
Bashful
Athens 2009
or even, like they might eat you
Kilkenny 2008
In San Francisco, we even point out a tree in its state of alone-ness
Alejandro Zambra's beautiful novella reminds the reader how very much like trees we humans are. It is entirely possible to live a private and solitary life, but is that really living? We watch the world through the protagonist Julián's eyes: we understand his need for others - he mirrors our lives. When he decides to care for a bonsai the allegory to a solitary human existence isn't lost on us. It is what happens when Julián decides he wants to surround himself with others, his own personal copse, that we see him bloom.
Solitude has turned against her.
Zambra writes perfectly that we may be a world of lonely atoms, but we need each other. Is this what Le Guin meant when she titled a book The Word for World is Forest?
Washington 2006