There are times when the length of a review is a clear indicator of a reviewer’s feelings. I know from my own experience that my lengthiest reviews are the books I most adore or the books that inspire the most ire. This leaves me in an odd position for Alejandro Zambra’s Chilean Poet, a novel about which I took precisely zero notes but which I nonetheless see as essentially perfect.
Despite being published a mere four years ago (!), Chilean Poet already feels timeless, eternal, classic. It inspires a feeling I haven’t had towards contemporary novels very often, though Zadie Smith’s White Teeth comes to mind. I’m trying to identify why Zambra’s work feels like a classic already and I think it comes down to the fundamentals of novel writing just being done extremely well. Chilean Poet has a flexible, lively style that adapts itself to the purpose of scenes. The characters are all fleshed out beautifully and they feel authentic and relatable, even and especially in their flaws—at the core, they are all likable. The plot and structure provide the right balance of forward momentum whilst not abandoning the reflective interiority of the characters. There’s also something about the omniscience of the narrator that speaks to the timelessness of the tale.
It could be argued that the novel has three main characters: Gonzalo, Carla, and Vicente. Gonzalo and Carla are teenage lovers sneakily touching each other under a pancho who inevitably break up—partly because of Gonzalo’s love of poetry and Carla’s complete disinterest. Roughly six years later, the two reconnect and Gonzalo quickly and correctly deduces that Carla has a son, Vicente. The following six years are the flourishing of the trio’s domestic life, which is replete with the beauty of small moments and the quiet tragedies that undercut our bliss.
Zambra’s capacity for selection, for focus, is stunning. Each scene, even the quotidian, is critical. For instance, there’s a scene in which Gonzalo and Vicente are caught off guard by a clerk to name their bond. Awkwardly, they describe themselves as “friends” and then have a discussion about the connotations of the word step-father in different languages (stepfather in Spanish holds a diminutive). There’s a tragic moment where Carla miscarries and it sets off a sequence of events that feels (narratively satisfyingly) inevitable in the way only carefully constructed novels achieve. There’s a whole sequence in which Gonzalo reads his poems to Carla, who is unimpressed, and then plagiarizes poems from other poets, who impress her. He gets caught in a lie about publishing a book and he commits to the falsehood, which also forces him to withhold the information that destroys his relationship with Carla: he has been accepted into a PhD program in New York and it is time to leave.
Each of the characters are so distinctive and beautiful and true in all of their weird little details. Vicente, for instance, needs to be weaned off of his addiction to cat food when he’s six years old. The interiority of the characters makes them so rich and likable. Seeing their inner tensions is insightful about how people are while also being compelling in terms of the conflict. In the final movement of the book, Zambra reunites Gonzalo and Vicente after years of separation. The two discover a great deal of experiential overlap, both being passionate about poetry. In the final sequence, there’s a tension of whether the two will ultimately reconcile. There are some truly excellent lines of dialogue where they offer barbs alongside praise, and sometimes the comments are both praise and disparagement at the same time. Their fates are left ambiguous, and it feels so beautiful to see their own uncertainties emerge. The last page of the book, without ruining anything, is mischievously evasive, which gives readers a kind of uneasy optimism about their futures.
Gonzalo, Vicente, and Carla are my favourite characters. There is, however, a fourth main character—Pru. She’s an American journalist in her thirties that finds herself in Chile for a story following a messy breakup with her girlfriend. Her section gives more insight into Vicente, of course, but also she ends up on a story where she interviews all kinds of Chilean poets. Zambra has a real knack for being able to describe literary culture. Again, it’s riddled with tensions of people who like each other’s work but whose jealousy prevents them from open admiration and they pretend to read each other’s work to seem enlightened but also are trying to eschew everything in the name of a new generation of poetry. The whole culture of poetry is depicted as a bit of a farce and, like his character, it feels completely real.
I think it’s really hard to be funny in literature. Zambra, though, has great timing and great turns of phrase. There’s a playfulness to the text that gives it a light touch. The fact that the tone isn’t overly serious makes some of the dramatic moments hit that much harder. Who would have imagined that the simple act of rearranging a fridge magnet would have such a heartbreaking quality? (Incidentally, Zambra explores some translingual meditations, one of which is about how adjectives in Spanish are gendered—except for triste (sadness), implying that sadness knows no gender or bounds).
Chilean Poet has some elements of the Künstlerroman tradition (novels that focus on the artistic development of its main character from their youth to adulthood). Think: James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or perhaps The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov. Throughout the book, we are treated to poems that the characters have written. Particularly in the final movement, the poems once again elevate the conflict and the insight into the characters. The commentary that runs alongside the poems and offers to the audience moments of such wonderful tenderness.
Against John Keats, I’d argue that beauty and truth are sometimes mutually exclusive. Not so here. The book is beautiful and true and touching. It’s gorgeous and sad and funny and moving. It had everything I would want from a genuine classic and offered, on top of that, surprise. I adored it. I hope at some point I’ll read this one again and feel the same magic and the same heartbreaking beauty the next time around.
Happy reading!
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