A review by tmackell
Cowboy Graves: Three Novellas by Roberto Bolaño

4.0

very fun and funny. Really picks up towards the end too. Like all Bolaño's writing I've read so far, this is so interconnected not just within itself but to his other writings as well. There's a nice editorial piece at the end that mentions that calling Bolaño's writing "fragmentary" is not quite accurate as the brief sections his writing is often split up in to are in fact interconnected and have some continuity to them. You could package this is one novel instead of "3 novellas" and I don't think anyone would really notice. There is definitely some distinction between the stories in here though, my favorites being the random-phone-call-from-a-stranger-invitation to the secret surrealist group in Paris, the part in which the narrator details his strategy for jacking off in movie theaters, the part where the narrator recounts his bumbling attempts at helping out with the resistance in Chile and forgetting the secret password (probably partially autobiographical as a lot of this is, if you are to believe what Bolaño has said about his life in interviews...), the part about organ transplants and love and money... :( unfortunately very obviously autobiographical.... wish he could've lived to flesh these stories out more and to see them published