Alejandro Zambra’s Ways of Going Home is a slim novel (really a novella) but it’s got such complexity to its layers that I feel like I need to sit down and read it through a second time. The novel fluctuates and blends two levels of narrative – a novel within a novel, but with characters and experiences merging or influencing each other. It’s very poetic, touching look at childhood in the late Pinochet era, but with the feeling of a childhood on the sidelines, and the search for meaning as an adult.