andres neumans’ new book: possibly worth checking out.

Readers of Roberto Bola�o�s nonfiction may have realized that the kind of hyperbolic praise he applies to Neuman is both sincerely meant and liberally applied. Seemingly few Latin American writers of the generations before, after, and concurrent with Bola�o�s own escaped his seal of approval or predictions of preeminence. On the evidence of this slim volume, it is impossible to say whether this level of praise is warranted, but it is possible to say that the book is tightly crafted, beautiful, and quietly powerful. In this its closest parallel is perhaps the work of the Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra, whose similarly diminutive Private Lives of Trees also deals with loss and its specter in a small family. The questions raised in both books are challenging ones: How does one explain (or not explain) pain and mortality? With what tools can we make these great mysteries comprehensible, if not acceptable? Or, conversely, what is there in life beautiful enough to distract us from these burdensome truths? The fact that Neuman�s answer�that we talk, through words and the body, to ourselves and each other�is conditional and unsurprising, makes it no less true, and no less thrilling.