Had the option of leaving an audio review been possible, my voice would have oozed zeal.
Childish Literature is Alejandro Zambra's musings about parenthood, fatherhood, reading to and with your child, and children's and childish literature, the author's childhood.
The start of the book is in the form of short yet potent and witty paragraphs starting from Zambra's son's birth.
Later on, we read short essays and stories, all of which are devoted to being a child and parent.
Zambra's writing resonated with me thanks to his sharp humour, affectionate storytelling, and insightful reflections.
I enjoyed the second part as much as the first part from a literary point of view, however I am glad that the editors and Zambra decided to start the book with the short musings. They captivated my attention, my mind harmonised with Zambra's narrative world, and I agreed with him on many points about his explorations of reading, children's literature and parenthood. The way the author describes his son and talks to/writes to him is adorable and relatable.
This is certainly one of the best examples of childish storytelling that I have read in a while, and I did not feel the passing of time during my read. I felt exactly what you feel when you come across a book that is right up your alley. Zambra, you're easily one of my new favourites.

Thank you, #netgalley and #fitzcarraldo for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review. You've given me a new favourite writer.

Football, parenting, all sorts of love and more. And all of it absolutely lush. The more I think about it, the more I let it sit and simmer in my silly brain, the more -- the more I want to tear it into pieces and eat it up because I love it so much, thank god this is a digital copy, otherwise lord knows what I'd do -- . There is one small section in between the parts I love more that I don't feel so sure about, but something tells me I'll love it doubly and get a lot more from it from a second reading. Despite how quickly I've gobbled this up, it's still such a rewarding read in so many ways. Not even the right book, and not even the right time, but Zambra never lets one down. It's an intensely tender work of art and love, and so much more. Gorgeous, gorgeous book this is. Please give more Zambra in English translation as soon as possible, thank you.

Childish Literature by Alejandro Zambra explores fatherhood and parenting and the experience of childhood.

4 stars: 3 for the first part, 5 for the second.

'Childish Literature' is hard to define, but probably a 'collection of autobiographical essays' is the most appropriate way to describe it. There is some short fiction too.

The book starts with Zambra's somewhat saccharine (and he admits this and sees no problem with it) musings on fatherhood, written in the days and months after the birth of his son.

I found the stories that followed in the second part better and more interesting (especially the ones on Darío, skyscrapers and football, as well as the story of Zambra tripping on the pajarito mushroom which is in the first part).

I am still not sure to what extent this a randomly thrown together bunch of scribblings or a carefully curated collection, and I probably prefer his fiction, but I enjoyed most of it all the same.

Everything Zambra writes is just chefs kiss. I love how he always weaves his love of Latin American literature into his books and is always using it as an inspiration for his writing.

This collection is all based around childhood, parenting and being young. I’m kind of sick about reading books about motherhood at the moment but Zambra’s work came at it from a very paternal angle which was still super nurturing and looked at the relationships between fathers and sons. It was really funny in some parts and I love that Jazmina was in it loads because she’s an angel. The way he explores life and growing up and learning in his books are always so special and this one was just a beautiful as the rest, McDowell’s translation included.

Parents' photos of their new-born children are only interesting to others up to a point. Books about becoming a parent, particularly a father and particularly an older father, run an even greater risk of being self-indulgent. The fact Alejandro Zambra's previous books have had a self-obsessive quality, albeit tempered by self-awareness, might also set alarm bells ringing. But his lightness of touch makes this book, especially its long title story/essay, charming and compelling, rather than excluding or tedious. Similarly, the collection could appear thrown together, but his musings on and memories of being a father and a son pull its various essays/stories together. Of course, the "literature" part of "Childish Literature" intrudes throughout, but in a good way. Observations on the effect of reading children's books on writers producing books for adults (this book's title implies questions about which is the more childish) are well-made and there are fine observations familiar to any parent: "Being a father consists of letting your child win until the day when the defeat is real". There's a lot to enjoy here.

"It seems so absurd to me that there is such thing as non-children’s literature, literature for adults, for non-children, a literature-literature that is the real literature; the idea that I write and read a real literature and the books you and I read together are a kind of substitute or alternative or preparation for real literature seems as unfair as it is false. And honestly, I don’t see any less literature in a story by Maurice Sendak or María Elena Walsh than in any of my favourites from ‘grown-up literature.’"

Childish Literature is the 6th book I've read in Megan McDowell's translation from Alejandro Zambra, this from his 2023 Literatura infantil.

In my review The Private Life of Trees, published in English by Fitzcarraldo by 2022 but from a much earlier work, I commented that Zambra is an author that, having then read five of his books, just didn't work for me.

"I ought to love him - he's steeped in Latin American literature, particularly poetry; there is a playful meta nature to his work; he's published by one of my favourite UK publishers and translated by a brilliant translator; and he writes (Chilean Poet the dishonorable exception) wonderfully compact books BUT ... something doesn't work and I think it is because his prose is deliberately flat and his stories are of 30-something angst that just doesn't grab me, with central male characters that are, per James Wood's NewYorker profile "spectatorial, somewhat literary (i.e., always “writing” something), hovering on the edge of things, passionate in love but destined to lose what he loves, and thus fatalistic and defensively unserious.""

Childish Literature is a thematic departure in that regard, because the 30-something angsty single narrator/author is now a early-40s first time parent, the novel addressed to his son, and there is a consequential maturity and also sentimentality to the text.

"There are men for whom fatherhood hits too hard. It’s as if overnight, from the mere fact of becoming fathers, they lose the ability to utter a single sentence without going into a story starring their children, who more than their children seem like their spiritual leaders, because for these lovestruck dads, even the blandest anecdote possesses a certain philosophical depth. That is, exactly, my case."

The book (novel? memoir?) that follows includes a diary of the first year or so of his son's life, stories of his early childhood, and towards the end Zambra reflecting on his own childhood and the relationship his son has with Zambra's father, his son's grandfather. On his own preparation for fatherhood:

"What I find striking, in any case, is the almost absolute lack of a tradition. Since all human beings – I assume – have been born, it would seem natural for us to be experts in matters of child-rearing, but it turns out that we know very little, especially men, who sometimes seem like those cheerful students who show up to class blissfully unaware that there’s a test. While women passed on to their daughters the asphyxiating imperative of maternity, we grew up pampered and ineffectual and even humming along to ‘Billie Jean’."

While admitting (above) to the charge of sentimentality, he defends it, and indeed as well as the challenge to children's literature being regarded as a separate, lesser, genre (see opening quote) he also argues that sentimentality is overly avoided in literature:

"For ages, literature has avoided sentimentalism like the plague. I have the impression that even today, many writers would rather be ignored than run the risk of being considered corny or mawkish. And the truth is that when it comes to writing about our children, happiness and tenderness defy our old masculine idea of the communicable. What to do, then, with the joyous and necessarily dopey satisfaction of watching a child learn to stand up or say his first words? And what kind of mirror is a child?

Literary tradition abounds with letters to my father , but letters to my son are pretty scarce. The reasons are predictable – sexism, selfishness, shame, adult centrism, negligence, self-censorship – but maybe it would be worth adding some purely literary reasons, because those of us who have tried know that writing about your own children is quite an artistic challenge. Certainly, it’s easier to omit kids or relegate them to the sidelines, or to see them as obstacles to writing and employ them as excuses; now it turns out it’s all their fault we haven’t been able to concentrate on our arduous, imposing novel."

It's certainly interesting to see the evolution in Zambra's thinking - but it makes for a rather banal read. I'm hoping that perhaps the new, more mature writer, will write books that resonate more with me in future - 7th time lucky?