Formally, this novella is quietly experimental. It’s about a man reading a story to his stepdaughter while he waits for her mother to come home, but that frame begins to unravel as the narrative meanders through memory, reflection, and imagined futures. It looks at relationships, storytelling, nature, and the emotional terrain of parenthood and its loneliness and fears.
There’s a sort of gentle absurdity running throughout. The conversations between the baobab and the oak tree, for example, hint at that surreal edge without tipping fully into magical realism. It’s quiet, elliptical, and interior. You close the book and realise you need to just sit with it for a while, not necessarily to understand it, but to let it settle.
Having spent some time in Chile, recognising street names and cultural references gave the book an added layer of familiarity that I really enjoyed. I wish I’d read it in Spanish as it’s quite short, and I imagine the language has a unique rhythm and intimacy that would shine even more in the original.
This novella is layered and open-ended but I think it could’ve pushed its experimental form even further for me! But perhaps that restraint is part of its charm; it feels like a book that knows what it wants to be and there are some meta textual aspects.
It was weird to see Paul Auster referenced again just after encountering him in the previous book I read. It’s made me finally want to pick up The New York Trilogy!
All in all, this is a contemplative, slightly surreal, and deeply human book. It’s a quiet, clever read that lingers.
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