parkeryoung's review
3.0
Some good stuff here, especially the first two novellas, which at times achieve that unsettling sense of drift which his best books are full of. In terms of his posthumous + unfinished material, I’d rank this just behind The Secret of Evil and ahead of The Third Reich.
annawilhelm17's review
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
dllman05's review
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.25
karisma1995's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
5.0
bambooty's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
drewbagelz's review
3.25
I probably would have appreciated this more had I been more familiar with Bolaño's work, but even with the little I have read, I could still recognize certain fragments here which later formed into more realized forms published elsewhere ("The Grub" from Last Evenings on Earth being the most obvious example).
lorgmorg's review
medium-paced
3.75
I’ve read a few translated works this year and this one in particular made me wonder if there is a word for enjoying work from another language and culture and getting something out of it, with total awareness that you’re not getting the same thing out of it as someone who speaks that language and is part of that culture. And with that said I like the feeling of being kept at a distance.
Like here, i’m with it, and then i’m shut out. And it feels so cool 😎 :
“like something in the foreground of a flemish painting, while in the background a long line of children are carted off to the slaughterhouse. (For further information, I recommend Auden, the poem that begins: ‘About suffering they were never wrong, / The Old Masters: how well they understood / Its human position; how it takes place / While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along . . .’ etcetera, etcetera, though I suppose you’ve never heard of Auden, like good Chileans.)” p174
Also… the afterword: PERPETUAL MOTION by Juan Antonio Masoliver Ródenas is so good. “Bolaño, in his itinerant writing, is more interested in the journey than it’s conclusion. We’re still inheritors of the nineteenth-century or traditional novel, which demanded linear exposition with an unambiguous ending, as if everything in life had a denouement or anti-climax.” HOT DAMN 🥵And maybe that feeling I mentioned earlier is HEIGHTENED because as Ródenas says of Bolaño, “he isn’t sure whether he’s chilean or Mexican (though all of his work is at once Chilean and Mexican)… The effect is to leave the reader up in the air or to oblige him to invent things for himself.”
Thought provoking read for me, sheesh.
croaker155's review
3.75
The afterward really made me appreciate this one more than the initial read did. Regardless, always love Bolaño.
mjanssen's review
4.0
Warning: Reading this before bed made me have vivid dreams that I was drinking in a cafe with strangers, ranting about anarchism and how COVID vaccination is a means for the government to surveil us (which I don't actually believe IRL).