2666: A Novel by Roberto Bolano Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of 2666: A Novel
Book Review: A TIMELESS MASTERPIECE. DAUNTING BUT WORTH IT.
Summary: 5 Stars
Think huge, Dickensian in complexity, at times surreal and beautiful and
at others chilling and sad. I consider it a masterpiece of the wise author's words and the traslator as well. The novel as art. Just so stagerring in it's enormity and imagination. You must invest in it true,
but if you love literature, you must read it. One for the ages.
Book Review: A writers novel
Summary: 4 Stars
`2666` is a writers novel, best appreciated by academics (or so inclined) and other writers, often commenting on itself, the craft of writing and the creative process. For the average reader the ending lacks coherence, seemingly 900 pages of often depressing anecdotal tangents about death. It's a generous work in that regard, there are 100s of stories, within stories, most of them entertaining and worth reading, but characteristic of Bolano, they don't really "end" in any traditionally satisfying way - one doesn't read this novel to find out what happens - although paradoxically, mystery is what drives the book forward.
Bolano successfully breaks one of the basic rules of fiction writing - rather than showing what happens, he tells what happens, like a journalist. Thus he is able to say as much in one paragraph that others take in a chapter. Bolano says as much in 900 pages that might normally take 2500. He does not use line breaks and quotes for dialog (except in book 5), so there are often long blocks of text with no white space - it's a 900 page novel of high word count, but smooth reading. Ironically I never felt I was wasting my time, as if every detail mattered, even though I guess none of it did, all of it did.
The novel is certainly an investment of time and energy. I would recommend it to anyone interested in European avant-garde literature, Latin American literature, literature in translation and a sprawling kind of dreamy (strange) ambiguous work resistant to classification and open to interpretations.
Book Review: Along for the Ride
Summary: 5 Stars
This work, by one of a handful of brilliant writers, spans the whole of the imagination. Clearly without equal, the late Robeto Bolano, has made concrete dreams and razor edged light seem commonplace. Pervasive, funny and savage all at the same instantBook Review: Astonishing
Summary: 5 Stars
I was initially reticent about reading this book because I struggled through The Savage Detectives, which was maddeningly abstruse. Not being familiar with esoteric Spanish/Mexican literati, much of its sly wit escaped me. But I was willing to engage myself in Bolano's final masterpiece because he is so probing and original. I was warmly astonished.
These are five books in one with a common thread through all of them--the murder of over 400 women in the past 15 years in the fictional town of Santa Teresa (based on true accounts of these murders in Ciudad Juarez). The first story is a search for the elusive German writer, Benno von Archimboldi, and a love triangle (or quadrangle) of Archimboldi scholars. The second story concerns a Professor who hears voices telling him to hang a geometry book on the clothesline, and is very fetching with bittersweet humor. In the third section, a reporter named Fate goes to the Mexican border to cover a boxing match. All these stories lead us to Santa Teresa, where the fourth and most staggering story takes place. It is a penetrating account of the deaths of these forgotten women and the sociopolitical and socioeconomic forces that shape the investigation. The last section does a full circle to illuminate Archimboldi's life.
Bolano could describe trousers drying and leave you haunted and awash in the beauty of his prose. While reading his words, the way sentences are stitched together like soft resplendent fabric, I felt like I was walking in it, or it was walking in me. This was liquid, fluid, creamy prose. It was very accessible because it was so natural. Never synthetic, never dry, never pretentious. In fact, it felt effortless and gliding. It was stark in its landscape but lush and sinewy in its tone, not one word wasted and yet it draped a world with a hypnotizing glow. It often was surreal; at times I felt I was entering a fifth dimension, but not in a David Lynch/David Foster Wallace/Nabokovian manner (but interesting that Bolano paid homage to Lynch). That is what dazzled me so deeply--that Bolano could rupture all the boundaries while maintaining them, that he could make you feel like you are in a postmodern world but easily so-- by writing with clarity and simplicity and alacrity. (Sometimes it was like being on LSD even though the writing was so pure, which was a feat in itself. You don't need to struggle to understand his novel).
Finally, what made this book so transcendent, so unutterably beautiful, was this massive, monumental heart at its center. There is so much love in it and so much humble wisdom and naked truth, that it cried. It cried for the women and it cried for humanity, and it did this without grandstanding, without asking it from us or telling us with trumpets. It just spoke for itself with mortality and through its mortality, its immortality.
Book Review: Best fiction of 2008
Summary: 5 Stars
A shocking compelling book. The 900 hundred page novel written by Robert Bolano is the story of a violent, sexist Mexico that I, a naive tourist would never associate to the smiling people and lavish resorts of a all inclusive Americanized Mexico. The book is written in 5 parts. With a underlying thread of violence that connects them all. The story is both shocking and tender. The violence of part 4 is at times almost unbearable to read. I loved this book! I was deeply touched by one page and thoroughly disgusted by another. This is a difficult book to read but well worth every moment spent. I ended the book feeling connected to the writer and the country. The next time I visit Mexico I want experience the real country and the people. If you love long emotional tempestuous novels you must read it! Unfortunately Robert Balano died in 2003, but his legacy is a masterwork. This was for me one of the rare books that filled my mind with possibilities.