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the complete review - various

Childish Literature

by
Alejandro Zambra

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : fine, varied collection on fatherhood and childhood

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "Lectura infantil tiene algo de libro escrito a ratos robados a la crianza, con urgencia, abundantes fórmulas y repeticiones: los finales cerrados con un cierto lazo emotivo, la insistencia del narrador en presentarse como alguien levemente inútil y de una torpeza seductora, las recurrencias metaliterarias al libro mientras está siendo escrito… (...) Pero sólo en unos pocos destellos Lectura infantil alcanza la emoción y la sabiduría narrativa de aquel acoso, desde la ficción, a las relaciones entre padres e hijos." - Carlos Pardo, El País
  
  
• "Childish Literature works best when this free association abates slightly, when the vignettes grow longer and Zambra’s talents as a storyteller are allowed to breathe. (...) (W)hatever the future of the fatherhood book, Childish Literature is a welcome addition to this fledgeling genre, and a useful reminder, in an age when the languages of literary criticism and therapy are drawing ever closer, that many important features of a man’s inner life can only be parsed in the most roundabout of ways." - Thomas P. Lambert, The Spectator

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Childish Literature is a collection that opens with the title piece, which presents snapshots from a year of fatherhood, from day 0, when Zambra's son Silvestre was born, through day 365. The book as a whole is a collection about fatherhood and childhood, as Zambra addresses both the experience of becoming a father as well as his own complicated relationship with his father in a variety of stories, autobiographical writings, and even a longer poem.
       Zambra imagines a whole story about 'The Kid with No Dad', but in most of the pieces there is a personal connection, as he describes his relationships with his young son, his father, wife, even a former girlfriend -- the latter in the amusing 'An Introduction to Soccer Sadness', an account of a relationship built up on the lie that Zambra takes no interest in soccer. (Soccer and soccer-fandom is significant in his life -- one of the few things that always kept him connected to his father, and something that he now also has begun to share with his son (who admits, while watching the 2021 European Championship final: "Dad, I don't really understand soccer that much. What's happening ?").)
       In 'Jennifer Zambra' he uses as his starting point the idea that: "If I had been a girl, my parents would have named me Jennifer Zambra", while in 'Skyscrapers' he revisits the time when he moved out of his parents' home (and didn't get to New York), when he had written a "Letter to My Father" (à la Kafka) which his father didn't read.
       Many of the pieces involve his reflections on his rapidly changing son, from before he was born -- Zambra and his wife already buying books for him ("even when we knew nothing about you, we already knew some of the books we would read together") -- to the toddler eagerly awaiting calls from his grandfather every weekend (Zambra and his family live in Mexico, while his father still lives in Chile, "separated by too many kilometers and almost two years of pandemic").
       At one point Zambra reflects:

Perhaps my writing has never been more justified than now, because in a way I'm writing the memories that he will lose. It's as if I were the secretary or nursery school teacher for some toddlers named Joe Brainard, Georges Perec, and Margo Glantz, and I wanted to facilitate the future writing of their I Remembers.

- M.A.Orthofer, 12 October 2024

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Links:

• Penguin Books publicity page
• Fitzcarraldo Editions publicity page
• Anagrama publicity page
• Sellerio publicity page
• Q & A at Latin American Literature Today
• Q & A at PEN America

• Círculo de Lectores (Spanish)
• Cleveland Review of Books
• la diaria (Spanish)
• La Fuente (Spanish)
• Inverse Journal
• Lecturalia (Spanish)
• The New Republic (scroll down for review)
• Pasion De La Lectura (Spanish)
• Publishers Weekly
• La Voz (Spanish)

• Bonsai
• Chilean Poet
• Multiple Choice
• The Private Lives of Trees
• Ways of Going Home

• See Index of Latin and South American literature

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About the Author:

       Chilean author Alejandro Zambra was born in 1975.

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© 2024 the complete review

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