I finished Roberto Bolano’s The Savage Detectives yesterday. What a book! I wasn’t sure what to make of it to begin with but was enjoying the writing enough to just let myself go with the flow and see where it took me, and I’m incredibly glad I did.
For those who haven’t read it, it’s long (577 pages), dense (an enormous cast of characters, most of whom narrate at some point), and unusual. The story of a group of somewhat brattish teenage poets in Mexico City in the 1970s who go off in their own directions, and are tracked through to the late nineties, with the story told by a large cast of those whose paths they crossed, in a story which embraces real events, real literary figures, and fictional creations. The central characters of Belano and Lima (who never narrate but are at the heart of the story) are apparently closely based on Bolano himself and his best friend.
That might sound like the worst sort of navel-gazing, but it's actually vivid, dark, heady, and occasionally very funny, but always fascinating and well composed
LeoToadstool:
Finished The Quiet American and was mightily impressed. It was my first Greene: he really knows how to create a narrative of psychological depth and marry it to a plot worthy of a thriller. I couldn't help but be reminded of The Great Gatsby while reading it, as both novels explore the dangers of idealism and the nasty compromises one makes to achieve the unobtainable. It is quite quotable too.
Now straight into Lessing's The Fifth Child. One word assessment so far: hypnotic.
For those who haven’t read it, it’s long (577 pages), dense (an enormous cast of characters, most of whom narrate at some point), and unusual. The story of a group of somewhat brattish teenage poets in Mexico City in the 1970s who go off in their own directions, and are tracked through to the late nineties, with the story told by a large cast of those whose paths they crossed, in a story which embraces real events, real literary figures, and fictional creations. The central characters of Belano and Lima (who never narrate but are at the heart of the story) are apparently closely based on Bolano himself and his best friend.
That might sound like the worst sort of navel-gazing, but it's actually vivid, dark, heady, and occasionally very funny, but always fascinating and well composed
LeoToadstool:
Finished The Quiet American and was mightily impressed. It was my first Greene: he really knows how to create a narrative of psychological depth and marry it to a plot worthy of a thriller. I couldn't help but be reminded of The Great Gatsby while reading it, as both novels explore the dangers of idealism and the nasty compromises one makes to achieve the unobtainable. It is quite quotable too.
Now straight into Lessing's The Fifth Child. One word assessment so far: hypnotic.
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