In the winter of 2002, an aspiring writer is hired to review books for the cultural pages of a Santiago newspaper. What follows is an apprenticeship with his editor, David Tightwad: columns filed at midnight, two-hour arguments over a single adjective, long evenings drinking beer and talking about literature. Tightwad edits his protegés' sentences, his commas, his enthusiasms and – on one unforgettable occasion – his facial hair. Then something small and unforgivable takes place, and the two men stop speaking. Twenty years later, over cold pizza in Mexico City, they try to work out what happened. A Christmas Story is a book with the beams exposed – introduced and footnoted by Alejandro Zambra's very own editor, Andrés Braithwaite, and annotated again in English by Megan McDowell, who argues with her own editor in the notes. In her brilliantly playful translation and interventions,the story of the relationship between a writer and his editor takes on extra layers of meaning, revealing how conversations and doubts begin to overflow beyond the page, the text, the language, and the work itself, forging bonds that no longer cling to literature alone, but to life.