Chilean Poet

September 1, 2021

In high school, Gonzalo and Carla loved each other, then broke up catastrophically. Nine years later, their attempt at reconciliation fails. But Carla's six-year-old son, Vincente, absorbs the dreamy Gonzalo's passion for verse and by age 18 is able to persuade American journalist Pru to write a piece showing that there's more to Chilean poetry than Nobel Prize winners Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda. Will it bring Vincente and Gonzalo together again? From the multi-award-winning Mexican author Zambra.

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December 15, 2021
A unique and personal novel about what it means to be part of a family. Who is the Chilean poet of the title? Is it Gonzalo, the main character of the first section, who meets a girl named Carla when they're both teenagers and then reconnects with her in their 20s? Gonzalo yearns to see his name alongside Chilean greats like Neruda and Mistral; he'd even settle to see his name among the not-so-greats or even any poets at all. Or is the Chilean poet Vicente, Carla's son, whom Gonzalo helps raise until leaving them both to take a position in New York City? Vicente takes over the second section of the novel, when he himself is 18 and, unlike Gonzalo, is actually a talented poet. Or is Zambra the titular poet in a piece of autofiction about his own literary yearnings and relationships in a Chile still recovering from a brutal dictatorship? Can anyone bear the burden of being a Chilean poet considering that two have won the Nobel Prize in literature? Zambra's novel, as translated by McDowell, renders both the small moments of literary striving and the everyday difficulties of being part of, and raising, a family with an insight that's both cleareyed and tender. Many of the author's musings about families could be applied to the act of writing and vice versa: "They were like two strangers searching desperately for a subject in common; it seemed like they were talking about something and were together, but they knew that really they were talking about nothing and were alone." The relationships in the novel are touching, often frustrating, and always authentic. Zambra isn't afraid to switch from graphic sex scenes to hilarious ruminations on poetry anthologies or into multiple characters' points of view, all in a few pages. A playful, discursive novel about families, relationships, poetry, and how easily all three can come together or fall apart.

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December 20, 2021
Chilean writer Zambra (Multiple Choice) is best known in English for his experimental stories and novellas, tendencies he sheds to mixed results in this multigenerational story about South American poets. The reader first meets Gonzalo in 1991, when he is a teenager working out his first poems and his love for the beautiful Carla, who breaks up with him. Nine years later, the two meet by chance in Santiago, by which time Carla has a precocious son named Vicente. Nominally more responsible than the boy’s birth father, Gonzalo becomes a de facto stepfather to Vicente. In the second half, Zambra covers Vicente’s teenage years and his early efforts as a poet as he becomes entangled at 18 with an American journalist named Pru, 31, who has fled an abusive relationship to write a history of Chilean poetry, and with a duplicitous fellow poet, Pato López López (“You guys are like Bolaño characters,” Pru says of them). Eventually, Gonzalo and Vicente’s paths cross again, reuniting them as a surrogate family of poets. The painstaking details and plodding pace can make this a slog, but there’s no questioning Zambra’s deep affection for writers grasping at love. The author always shows a great deal of heart, but it comes through best in his shorter work. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency.

Starred review from February 1, 2022

In this latest from multi-award-winning Chilean poet and novelist Zambra, Gregorio and Carla break up after a brief stormy affair, but nine years later they rekindle their relationship, but this time Carla brings her precocious son, Vicente, into the mix. The novel's first half focuses on developing this blended family and on poetaster Gonzalo's efforts to get published. Then Zambra skips ahead a few years to focus on Vicente's similar efforts to realize his poetic muse. The separate lives of these step-relatives merge at the end as they reconnect in the roles of teacher and student. Because of the whimsical touches of humor (the kid is addicted to Whiskas) and irreverent parody of poet stereotypes, readers are often left pondering how to evaluate the verses that appear dispersed throughout the pages. The novel's familial theme resembles Zambra's earlier Ways of Going Home more than his unconventional Multiple Choice, and translator McDowell succeeds at finding appropriate English equivalents for the profuse Chilean slang. VERDICT English-language readers should not allow themselves to be distracted by the plethora of poets populating the novel, some famous (e.g., Nicanor Parra) and others bogus, but should instead focus on Zambra's overarching paean to literature in general and poetry in particular.--Lawrence Olszewski

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