Book review - "2666" (Roberto Bolano)

[cybermule]

This book is brilliant - maybe the best I've read for ages, in that I'll definitely read it again, which I don't generally feel with books these days. It's a very big book - this is partly the reason that I've taken about two months to finish it. The other reason is that one of the two intertwining themes is the actions of one or more serial killers in a small city in Chile. The book is divided into five chapters, one of which is devoted entirely to listing the details of the killings. That's done in an interesting way, but after that penultimate chapter, I needed a good long break. It's cleverly written, in that each of the five chunks could stand alone as a short book and still be interesting, and it's cleverly written in a way that I can say is interesting and engaging, but would probably take a literature degree to explain fully and properly. The other theme is a semi-obscure but well respected German author, and together these two loose stories, which may or may not be concretely collected span a huge range of time and geographical distance, yet all of it is masterfully put into words, along with the characters that range their paths through the intertwined stories.

Can absolutely recommend :)

Comments

[aras-55555.livejournal.com]

I'm kinda interested in this one, I dunno, I guess partly because it seems like a huge monumental kind of thing, and its gotten some good reviews (including yours :) ). Seems pretty dark though, I'm not sure I could stomach all that violent killing for 1000+ pages.

[cybermule.livejournal.com]

I think you'd like it. Most of it isn't about the killings. One chapter is a bit soul-destroying, but you could actually just skip it. Each chapter is reasonably self-contained.

[aras-55555.livejournal.com]

Hm, ok, maybe I'll give it a chance if it crosses my path :)