The Private Lives of Trees: A Novel

**The second novel by the internationally celebrated writer Alejandro Zambra, a "short and strikingly original" ( *The New Yorker* ) book about the stories we spin for ourselves and our loved ones--now reissued by Penguin**Veronica is late, and Julian is increasingly convinced she won't ever come home. To pass the time, he improvises a story about trees to coax his stepdaughter, Daniela, to sleep. He has made a life as a literature professor, developing a novel about a man tending to a bonsai tree on the weekends. He is a narrator, an architect, a chronicler of other people's stories. But as the night stretches on before him, and the hours pass with no sign of Veronica, Julian finds himself caught up in the slipstream of the story of his life--of their lives together. What combination of desire and coincidence led them here, to this very night? What will the future--and possibly motherless--Daniela think of him and...