Call number
FIC ZAM
Collection
Genres
Publication
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2013), Edition: 1st, 160 pages
Description
The writer son of a quiet sympathizer with the Pinochet regime reflects on the progress of his novel, in which an unnamed boy from a Chilean suburb witnesses an earthquake and meets an older girl who asks him to spy on her uncle.
User reviews
LibraryThing member GraceZ
This was a very interesting and enjoyable read. It was the right blend of "literary writing" with story-telling for me; there was a flow to it and I was never distracted by contrived or over-done writing.
The story itself was not what the story was, if that makes sense... I thought it was a lot like
Compared to "The Sense of an Ending", "Ways of Going Home" is more about the way we handle the present under the weight of the past. There is also the additional element of comparing an actual present to a fictional past - this is a clever way to write a book. There are two parts: one is about a young writer wrestling his life and the book he's working on, and the other is his semi-autobiographical novel.
This is a writer's novel, with insight to the writer's mind and observations, if not the writing process; lots of intertextuality, references to other writers, even direct quotes. I love books that quote other authors (unless they become overdone, overworked, intellectual to the point of pretentiousness).
The story itself was not what the story was, if that makes sense... I thought it was a lot like
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"The Sense of an Ending", in its questioning of memories and the relationship between past and present - but unlike it in that it lacked the questions of guilt and accountability (although that is present in the book, but mainly as a question about the comportment of his parents and their generation during the Pinochet regime).Compared to "The Sense of an Ending", "Ways of Going Home" is more about the way we handle the present under the weight of the past. There is also the additional element of comparing an actual present to a fictional past - this is a clever way to write a book. There are two parts: one is about a young writer wrestling his life and the book he's working on, and the other is his semi-autobiographical novel.
This is a writer's novel, with insight to the writer's mind and observations, if not the writing process; lots of intertextuality, references to other writers, even direct quotes. I love books that quote other authors (unless they become overdone, overworked, intellectual to the point of pretentiousness).
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LibraryThing member Luli81
"Instead of screaming, I write books" R. Gary
This is a redemptive tribute to those who went missing during the Pinochet regime. To all those unknown names whose blood still runs through the veins of the silenced generation which was growing up during this elusive period in Chile.
Zambra’s
"The novel belongs to our parents," the narrator says, understanding that his childhood experience of censorship and brutality was indirect, diluted by his infancy. Zambra plays a magic trick in creating an evocative past even in such a distressing time, where children played to be either war correspondents or secret spy agents or, if you prefer, secondary characters, as the metafiction kicks in with force.
The passage of time gives perspective to the ones now remembering. Zambra and his narrator dare to speak in an attempt to relieve the painful hungover which comes from a violent past and the arduous task of coming to terms with a disorienting history.
The once oblivious child has no choice but to carry the heavy burden of guilt on behalf of his parents, who were passive supporters of Pinochet, and learn to live with the increasing tension and estrangement towards them. I felt disturbed with recognition about the way Zambra faced his conflicting emotions when evoking his parental figures. The abstract need, the unquestionable respect for his parents in his youthful days as opposed to the embarrassment and disapproval he feels for them in the present. It rings a bell.
“You went a different way,” my mother said later, angry, her eyes still swollen. You were the ones who went a different way, I thought, but I didn’t say it.”
The different ways of remembering which try to ease the anguish of knowing that you have become an orphan when you decided to start writing.
“I thought about my mother, my father. I thought: What kinds of faces do my parents have? But our parents never really have faces. We never learn to truly look at them.”
This novel is also a hymn to the vocation of writing, and it’s precisely this calling which urges the narrator to write down the slippery scenes of a long gone past to give first names to these secondary characters, to explain, in the end, his own story.
"Although we might want to tell other people's stories we always end up telling our own."
The courageous catharsis of giving up the fictional framing to write about oneself, to finally speak out loud. That is what pierced right through me. To see these survivors of a lost world dealing with their present the best they can. Some stay, some fly away.And the shock which comes with the understanding that it’s just because you want them to stay that you have to let them go. And that it really doesn’t matter. Either staying or going, each one has to find its own way of going back home.
This is a redemptive tribute to those who went missing during the Pinochet regime. To all those unknown names whose blood still runs through the veins of the silenced generation which was growing up during this elusive period in Chile.
Zambra’s
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unpretentious voice gets irretrievably tangled with the one narrating the story, a nameless writer, who simultaneously mirrors his life through his characters, creating a perfecty circled metanarration, overflowing with complex yet sophisticated symbolism."The novel belongs to our parents," the narrator says, understanding that his childhood experience of censorship and brutality was indirect, diluted by his infancy. Zambra plays a magic trick in creating an evocative past even in such a distressing time, where children played to be either war correspondents or secret spy agents or, if you prefer, secondary characters, as the metafiction kicks in with force.
The passage of time gives perspective to the ones now remembering. Zambra and his narrator dare to speak in an attempt to relieve the painful hungover which comes from a violent past and the arduous task of coming to terms with a disorienting history.
The once oblivious child has no choice but to carry the heavy burden of guilt on behalf of his parents, who were passive supporters of Pinochet, and learn to live with the increasing tension and estrangement towards them. I felt disturbed with recognition about the way Zambra faced his conflicting emotions when evoking his parental figures. The abstract need, the unquestionable respect for his parents in his youthful days as opposed to the embarrassment and disapproval he feels for them in the present. It rings a bell.
“You went a different way,” my mother said later, angry, her eyes still swollen. You were the ones who went a different way, I thought, but I didn’t say it.”
The different ways of remembering which try to ease the anguish of knowing that you have become an orphan when you decided to start writing.
“I thought about my mother, my father. I thought: What kinds of faces do my parents have? But our parents never really have faces. We never learn to truly look at them.”
This novel is also a hymn to the vocation of writing, and it’s precisely this calling which urges the narrator to write down the slippery scenes of a long gone past to give first names to these secondary characters, to explain, in the end, his own story.
"Although we might want to tell other people's stories we always end up telling our own."
The courageous catharsis of giving up the fictional framing to write about oneself, to finally speak out loud. That is what pierced right through me. To see these survivors of a lost world dealing with their present the best they can. Some stay, some fly away.And the shock which comes with the understanding that it’s just because you want them to stay that you have to let them go. And that it really doesn’t matter. Either staying or going, each one has to find its own way of going back home.
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LibraryThing member DrFuriosa
The novel-within-a-novel structure is clever but frustrating. The language is beautiful, but this left me wanting.
LibraryThing member Beamis12
This is a novel within a novel, in that it is from the viewpoint of a young boy that the first part of the novel is written, the second part is narrated by the author of the first past. Confused? Meta fiction is a style that is fantastic when the prose is but that can alos be confusing. I liked
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this book but at times I was confused. Chile, during Pinochet's dictatorship, the novel take place between two big earthquakes, a first love, and the changing perspective between what is seen and thought as a child and than remeasured as a adult are all emcompaased in this small book. There is no detailed information on really anything, just glimpses and yet the book works. Show Less
LibraryThing member jasonlf
There was a lot that was good in Ways of Going Home, and it was generally very readable, but ultimately it seemed a little thin and did not fully work for me. The postmodernism became somewhat wearying, in part because it did not have enough else to sustain ones interest.
The novella is divided into
One of the recurring themes in the book is dictatorship and the impact it has on children and how it is perceived by them. It is also about writing and remembering and creating characters. Overall it seems ambitious and only partly successful--but I would be interested in reading more by Alejandro Zambra.
The novella is divided into
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parts. The first is the story of a boy meeting a girl in the wake of the 1985 earthquake and his agreeing to spy on his neighbor for her. The second part is the author himself writing the first part. The third part returns to the story when the boy/author meets the girl again twenty years later and has an affair with her. The final part returns to the writer talking about writing the book.One of the recurring themes in the book is dictatorship and the impact it has on children and how it is perceived by them. It is also about writing and remembering and creating characters. Overall it seems ambitious and only partly successful--but I would be interested in reading more by Alejandro Zambra.
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LibraryThing member Laura400
This is less a traditional novel than a work of post-modern exploration about the legacy of growing up in Pinochet's Chile, and the more general relationship between parents and children.
This slim volume is beautifully written and translated. It was a pleasure to read and makes one want to explore
This slim volume is beautifully written and translated. It was a pleasure to read and makes one want to explore
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Zambra's other work. Show Less
LibraryThing member nosajeel
There was a lot that was good in Ways of Going Home, and it was generally very readable, but ultimately it seemed a little thin and did not fully work for me. The postmodernism became somewhat wearying, in part because it did not have enough else to sustain ones interest.
The novella is divided into
One of the recurring themes in the book is dictatorship and the impact it has on children and how it is perceived by them. It is also about writing and remembering and creating characters. Overall it seems ambitious and only partly successful--but I would be interested in reading more by Alejandro Zambra.
The novella is divided into
Show More
parts. The first is the story of a boy meeting a girl in the wake of the 1985 earthquake and his agreeing to spy on his neighbor for her. The second part is the author himself writing the first part. The third part returns to the story when the boy/author meets the girl again twenty years later and has an affair with her. The final part returns to the writer talking about writing the book.One of the recurring themes in the book is dictatorship and the impact it has on children and how it is perceived by them. It is also about writing and remembering and creating characters. Overall it seems ambitious and only partly successful--but I would be interested in reading more by Alejandro Zambra.
Show Less
LibraryThing member mausergem
Alejandro Zambra is a Chelian novelist who writes in Spanish. This is a translated book. The book starts with an earthquake and ends with one. The author in first person narrates his experience of writing a novel. As a child of nine he meets Claudia on his front lawn after the earthquake. She is
This is a novel which stutters in its course. The author thinks about abandoning the project but prods on. Painfully. Though there are some good passages there is no real story and the novel is a bore.
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the niece of his neighbour, Raul. This is 1985 when Chile was under a dictatorship. Claudia asks the author to keep an eye on her uncle. Later as the story unravels Raul is really Claudia's father who had to change his identity because of his political affiliations. After many years the author meets Claudia and the story is revealed.This is a novel which stutters in its course. The author thinks about abandoning the project but prods on. Painfully. Though there are some good passages there is no real story and the novel is a bore.
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LibraryThing member nittnut
Autobiography and fiction are intermingled in this short novel to the extent that by the end they have nearly blended into one story. It is about the past and about living with the past and making sense of it. It's about explaining parents' inexplicable behavior. It's about dictatorships and the
Quotes:
If there was anything to learn, we didn't' learn it. Now I think it's a good thing to lose confidence in the solidity of the ground, I think it's necessary to know that from one moment to the next everything can come tumbling down.
To read is to cover one's face, I thought.
To read is to cover one's face. And to write is to show it.
Parents abandon their children. Children abandon their parents. Parents protect or forsake, but they always forsake. Children stay or go but they always go. And it's all unfair, especially the sound of the words, because the language is pleasing and confusing, because ultimately we would like to sing or at least whistle a tune, to walk alongside the stage whistling a tune. We want to be actors waiting patiently for the cue to walk onstage. But the audience left a long time ago.
I knew little, but at least I knew that: no one could speak for someone else. That although we might want to tell other people's stories, we always end up telling our own.
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scars they leave, even on those who on the surface, seem to have come through unscathed. It is beautifully translated by Megan McDowell, and her imprint is so light that it is almost as if it was written as intended in English. Highly recommended.Quotes:
If there was anything to learn, we didn't' learn it. Now I think it's a good thing to lose confidence in the solidity of the ground, I think it's necessary to know that from one moment to the next everything can come tumbling down.
To read is to cover one's face, I thought.
To read is to cover one's face. And to write is to show it.
Parents abandon their children. Children abandon their parents. Parents protect or forsake, but they always forsake. Children stay or go but they always go. And it's all unfair, especially the sound of the words, because the language is pleasing and confusing, because ultimately we would like to sing or at least whistle a tune, to walk alongside the stage whistling a tune. We want to be actors waiting patiently for the cue to walk onstage. But the audience left a long time ago.
I knew little, but at least I knew that: no one could speak for someone else. That although we might want to tell other people's stories, we always end up telling our own.
Show Less
LibraryThing member ParadisePorch
(Fiction, Literary, Chilean)
This book showed up in my library inbox in late November because I was trying to complete an unofficial A to Z Reading Challenge using authors’ last names.
Amazon tells me that the book “begins with an earthquake, seen through the eyes of an unnamed nine-year-old
I plead extreme fatigue. I plead grief. I plead the passage of 2½ years. This may well be “A brilliant novel from ‘the herald of a new wave of Chilean fiction’” but I can’t remember and can’t rate it.
This book showed up in my library inbox in late November because I was trying to complete an unofficial A to Z Reading Challenge using authors’ last names.
Amazon tells me that the book “begins with an earthquake, seen through the eyes of an unnamed nine-year-old
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boy” in Santiago, Chile. I vaguely remember that, but nothing else.I plead extreme fatigue. I plead grief. I plead the passage of 2½ years. This may well be “A brilliant novel from ‘the herald of a new wave of Chilean fiction’” but I can’t remember and can’t rate it.
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LibraryThing member klburnside
Ways of Going Home is told from the point of view of a Chilean novelist who grew up during Pinochet's dictatorship. It alternates between excerpts from his novel and what is happening in his real life. The novel within the novel is fairly autobiographical, and by using this structure, Zambra
I liked that the book wasn't overtly political. The book isn't exactly about Pinochet's dictatorship, but rather about what it is like to be a child in such a turbulent period in Chile's history, the relationship between parents and their children, and how this affects adulthood.
I found the book to be really well written (and/or well translated, I suppose). I can't think of the word to describe his writing. I want to say it was somehow slow and simple, but in a very positive way. I want to say that every paragraph packed a punch (a very gentle punch) far greater than the words contained in the paragraph. I'll just say I liked the writing.
I saw this book at the library, and found the cover appealing and it is short, so I decided to read it for a reading challenge as a book I found at the library by browsing. I didn't vet the book on Goodreads at all and this unusual, as I like to know what I'm getting into. I'm glad I found it, it was a nice, quick read.
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illustrates how using writing can help someone process their past and their present. I liked that the book wasn't overtly political. The book isn't exactly about Pinochet's dictatorship, but rather about what it is like to be a child in such a turbulent period in Chile's history, the relationship between parents and their children, and how this affects adulthood.
I found the book to be really well written (and/or well translated, I suppose). I can't think of the word to describe his writing. I want to say it was somehow slow and simple, but in a very positive way. I want to say that every paragraph packed a punch (a very gentle punch) far greater than the words contained in the paragraph. I'll just say I liked the writing.
I saw this book at the library, and found the cover appealing and it is short, so I decided to read it for a reading challenge as a book I found at the library by browsing. I didn't vet the book on Goodreads at all and this unusual, as I like to know what I'm getting into. I'm glad I found it, it was a nice, quick read.
Show Less
LibraryThing member emquixotic
I am quickly falling in love with Spanish speaking authors. Zambra, who is from Chile, weaves a poetic story about the earthquake that hit Santiago, Chile when he was a kid. It's also a story about how he grows up and searches for Claudia, a girl he knew when he was young. He writes about what it's
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like to leave home and go home and, I think, elaborates poetically on the feeling of never being able to go back to your childhood home the same way again. Show Less
LibraryThing member b.masonjudy
What impressed me most about Ways of Going Home was the way Zambra brings in the political history in subtle but overarching ways. The shadow of the Pinochet regime is evident throughout the book that adds weight to the family drama and to the struggle of the protagonists that could've easily
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devolved into a whimsical metanarrative exercise. Show Less
Awards
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2015)
Pages
160
ISBN
0374286647 / 9780374286644