Chile Scenes: Ways of Going Home

Admittedly I'm a sucker for obscure contemporary Latin American novels so have embarked enthusiastically on Alejandro Zambra's Ways of Going Home but will hold off on judgment till at least tomorrow - but first day of reading shows me: hm, is this really a novel or a publisher's ploy? I mean this is literally about half the length of some short stories I've read in magazines. It's about 120 pages, yes, but they are very small pages with very large type and generous white space - so the book is easy to read, a plus, but kind of a ripoff for anyone buying it (I have a library copy) and resume-puffer for the author perhaps? Well, story, novella, or novel - how good is it, is it worth reading, what's the story? Ways of Going has many of the themes and qualities to draw me to fiction: perhaps it has the scope of a novel, but very compressed and elliptical; it touches on major themes in life and politics; and it's comfortably literary if at times too arch and self-referential. Story in essence (through first 2/3rds or so): young man begins by thinking about the pleasures of being lost and not knowing exactly how to get home (I once wrote an essay on this topic); he then recalls being 10 years old during the Chilean earthquake, living outdoors (for safety) in a tent in with his family in a Santiago suburb; a neighbor - only person he knows who lives alone - Raul - shows up with two girls, one his daughter apparently, Claudia. Narrator becomes fascinated by Claudia, follows her around almost spying in her; she makes contact with him and asks him to spy on Raul, which he does - discovers various people visiting R., and reports this back to Claudia, but the relationship ends (as Cl. apparently has a new boyfriend). Not much happened. Second part: the novelist now reflects on what he's written, suffering now from writer's block, invites ex-wife -girlfriend to come over and to read what he's written; their relationship rebuilds, but she won't read his unfinished work. 3rd part: he recalls the disappearances during the dictatorship and his days in college, and he remembers, at about age 30 (?) going back to his neighborhood, visiting his parents, looking at his own books on shelf in his old room, and eventually looking up Claudia after many years - and then they get together for coffee and she tells him more details about Raul. OK - so you see the major themes: the earthquake, the politics, the literary self-references; more is to come, obviously, as we no doubt will learn about the role R. may have played in the political underground? These are the parts, but what is the sum of the parts? For this novel to be successful, it will have to rise above the level of quotidian and become deep and mysterious and surprising, like the best work of, say, fellow-Chilean Bolano. Much of it does remind me of Murakami as well, with its sense of loneliness and foreboding and disappearances - the question for me is whether Zambra can build on that mood and bring the novel to a point, or whether it's all atmospherics - whether Z can break through the cool narrative tone of the novel and bring the novel to a significant conclusion, not just this happened and then this.