extemporalli 's review for:

A Little Lumpen Novelita by Roberto Bolaño
4.0

Sex, exploitation, crime, and ambivalence converge in Bolaño's 'little lumpen novelita'. It's kind of stunning that the entire novel comes in at just over a hundred pages, given how 'heavy' the novel feels at times. I don't mean that the novel is sodden or too long, I mean that there's a kind of depressive weight to the story that Bolaño consciously employs.

I enjoyed that he gets us to the ending we get to without dramatizing it: rather than a hero's journey he gives us just a simple turn-away, a sense of crisis narrowly averted.