"A long drive across Chile's Atacama desert, traversing "the worn-out puzzle" of a broken family-a young man's corrosive intimacy with his mother, the obtrusive cheer of his absentee father, his uncle's unexplained death-occupies the heart of this novel. Camanchaca is a low fog pushing in from the sea, its moisture sustaining a near-barren landscape. Camanchaca is the discretion that makes a lifelong grief possible. Sometimes, the silences are what...