adam_mcphee 's review for:

Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra

3.0

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A brief glimpse of a short, literary love affair and then it’s aftermath years later. The man misses out on a job opportunity to transcribe a famous writer’s notes into a novel, and after bragging to his new lover decides to handwrite his own novel about that past affair so that he can appear to be transcribing the famous guy’s novel when she’s around. The plot and the insights into literature are really just there to justify all the little slice of life stuff, which I quite enjoyed but which would make the whole thing feel formless if not for that justification. Maybe. I don’t know.