A boy tells his little brother-on-the-way of all he hopes for when the baby comes and everything that has transpired leading up to the birth. A book that—from the funny, ingenuous and Frank point of view of the impatient little narrator—delves deeply into questions of time, change and family relationships.
There is a thingy in a place. A thingy that has been there for a long, long time. Or, maybe, for just a little while. Some pass by and see it. They are surprised, or angry, or they ignore it. Some try to explain it. The rings of the Queen, a blind pastry, an old telephone, and even a dead hen… Everyone has something to say about this thingy that does nothing and is just there. Is the thingy all of this? Is it something else? Or is there nothing?
A cedar tree grows in a wood. It is cut down, and from its wood comes the pencil in this story. The pencil is passed along, from a shop in Canada all the way to a table in a Buenos Aires café. In each place it finds its owner for a time: a prisoner planning an escape, a student in love, a traveling architect, a portrait artist who works in a hotel. Finally, moved along by the force of chance or destiny, it comes into the possession of a writer who tells us of this apparently haphazard journey, which is no more—and no less—than the life of a pencil.
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