My Documents - Alejandro Zambra

I first learned of the Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra when I came across his short story “Family Life” in Harper’s earlier this year. It’s a charming and unassuming story about an apparently unemployed forty-year-old named Martín who is housesitting the family home of a distant cousin, his beautiful wife, and their young daughter. While they’re away in Europe, Martín spends much of his time smoking, watching TV, and doing little else until the cat goes missing, at which point he meets a woman named Paz and pretends that both the cat and house are his, that the picture of the beautiful woman on the wall is of his recently separated wife and that she’s keeping their daughter away from him. Things get complicated after that, both with Paz and with the mounting lies out of which Martín sees no exit. At the time I made a mental note of the story and its author, and so when the collection My Documents recently came out—to a great deal of buzz—I made sure to order a copy. I’m glad I did.

Reading Proust III

So after a hiatus of a couple of months, during which I read other novels and story collections, I finally got back to the business of reading Proust, this time tackling the third volume, The Guermantes Way. And what a happy homecoming it was to meet all those familiar faces again! How nice it was to become reacquainted with our unnamed narrator (I understand that in Volume VI his name is finally revealed to be, not surprisingly, Marcel); the family servant, Francoise, who simultaneously dispenses equal (and hilarious) measures of both compassion and cruelty; and Marcel’s (let’s just call him that) charming and aristocratic friend, Robert St-Loup. Also back are Marcel's calculating and unctuous friend, Bloch; the aristocrats we first met at Balbec in Volume II, Mme. Villeparisis and that arrogant and irritating Baron de Charlus (the kind of character you love to hate!); and of course the narrator’s grandmother, mother and father (although the latter makes little more than a cameo appearance in this volume—more on that later).