This may be the worst book I have ever read.
I'm giving it up after 150 pages of the total 577. This book has received rave reviews from many in literary circles and Bolano has been touted as the new Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I don't agree). It has also received plenty of criticism - reviewers on amazon tend to give it either 5 stars or 1-2 stars.
I found the first half to be reasonably enjoyable, despite not much really happening apart from graphic sex. The text is chock full of Latin American literary references, which went totally over my head, I'm sure the literary in-jokes are hilarious, really:
There was Ifigenia cruel and El plano oblicuo and Retratos reales e imaginarios, in addition to the five volumes of Simpatias y diferencias, all by Alfonso Reyes, and Prosas dispersas, by Julio Torri, and a book of stories, Mujeres, by someone called Eduardo Colin whom I'd never heard of, and Li-Po y otros poemas, by Tablada, and...
The second, and longest, section of the book is 396 pages of short commentary, usually under 3 pages, told from the point of view of over 40 different people. This style of writing was ridiculously hard to follow, and incredibly boring, with little time to engage with a character or storyline before being moved to the next narrator.
The author does seem to be a very good writer, and the book feels very 'literary', it just didn't say anything I thought was worth reading. I was intending to read 2666 by Bolano, since it was on the Amazon editor's best books of 2008 list, but I think I'll give it a miss.
0 stars.
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