Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra

Despite being just under eighty pages, Alejandro Zambra’s Bonsai is surprisingly hard to summarize. It’s a book essentially about two lives: Julio’s, which doesn’t end, and Emilia, whose does. The two young scholars develop a relationship while studying for exams and part of the book is about the blooming and withering of their romances. It’s a simple ‘slice of life’ but I felt the book to be funny, tender, creative, and grounded.

The young Julio has two meaningful relationships—one with Emilia and, later, one with Maria. At the time in his life when he meets Emilia, we are told that “Julio has avoided serious relationships, hiding not from women but from seriousness, since by that point he knew that seriousness was every bit as dangerous as women, if not more so” (5). I like that idea of trying to avoid seriousness, and I can’t help but feel like Zambra’s approach to writing is infused with a humour that puts theory into practice. For instance, there’s a funny part in which both Julio and Emilia have lied about reading Proust and have to act as though they’ve read In Search of Lost Time. In another part, Julio pretends that he has become a translator for a writer to impress Maria and that lie leads him into inventing a book and lying about its premise, only for him to be thwarted by the truth. There’s a real comic element in Bonsai that is hard to resist but also that elevates the darker threads of the text. 

I’ve left out the second half of the passage about Julio avoiding seriousness. The passage continues as follows: “Julio knew he was doomed to seriousness, and he tried, stubbornly, to thwart his serious fate, even as he stoically awaited that frightening and inevitable day when seriousness would come to settle in his life for good” (5). Zambra balances the light and the dark, the satire and the serious. The ending of the book, which I won’t spoil, concludes on a somber note and driving around in a 30, 000 peso cab ride. It’s touching and beautiful and ‘serious’—it is, in Zambra’s words elsewhere, “a light tale that becomes heavy” (13).

I think the real core of the book is the relationships between the characters, who are relatable and likable in all of their flaws. Zambra has a particular talent for capturing the spirit of young love. For instance, when Emilia and Julio start their relationship it “was a relationship riddled with truths, with personal disclosures that quickly built up a complicity they strove to see as unassailable” (13). That characterization rings true—there are those couples that come to orbit only one another and there’s a sort of metanarrative about the writing of their lives: “This is the story of two student enthusiasts of the truth, aficionados of deploying words that seem like truth, of smoking endless cigarettes, and of enclosing themselves within the violent complacency of those who believe themselves better and purer that others, than that immense and detestable group called everyone else” (13). The grandiose language serves to both elevate and belittle them at the same time. I liked that because it feels so much the way I ought to have been treated as a young lad.

In another scene of the young couple, Emilia’s friend does not like Julio and says that she has changed since being with him. Emilia defends her relationship, possibly not believing her own words: “Why would you want to be with someone if they didn’t change your life?” (18). Zambra’s description of the incident is that “She said that, and Julio was there when she said it: that life only made sense if you found someone who would change it, who would destroy your life as you knew it. Anita found the theory a little dubious, but she didn’t argue. She knew that when Emilia used that tone there was no point in contradicting her” (18). The grand pronouncements of lovers serve as the groundwork for the book and put Bonsai alongside the literary precedents it references (Madame Bovary, for instance). It feels connected; classic in its own way.

I also have to say, I really like the way the book we read has interjections and uncertainties from the narrator and comes to parallel the book that Julio improvises when “translating” from a successful author. There’s a haphazardness to the narrative that mimics Julio’s own unprompted inventions. Even the fact that the story is not strictly about Julio and Emilia but also jumps to Julio and Maria seems unplanned. The quick transition into new narratives and the short chapters places us in the middle of invention.

I don’t have a ton to say about this book, but I really liked it. I thoroughly enjoyed the characters and the voice of the writing and it’s always impressive when an author can navigate two distinct tones (somber and comic) and make me feel for the characters so deeply in fewer than a hundred pages. I commend Zambra’s Bonsai—looking forward to reading more of his work soon.

Happy reading!