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A review by mmcloe
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
It took me like 2 months to read but goddammit Bolaño strikes again. Like 2666, this absolutely DRAGS in the massive center section, only to be completely unfolded, refolded, and folded into a new dimension by the outer sections.
This is a novel that teaches you how to read it. The hunt for Caeseria - combing through archives, talking to half-demented bar patrons and landowners, avoiding murderous pimps, writing mediocre poetry - mirrors the hunt for Lima Belano that the center lays before us like a little chess board. It's a faux archive tangled with real archives of the forgotten avant-garde of Mexico City and the savage detectives, the what's-outside-the-windows is us, the readers, playing Bolaño's archive game however we choose to.
Imagining a fun little novella framed as an edited anthology of contemporary literary scholars writing increasingly delirious analyses of Lima and Belano based on the testimonies of this book.
This is a novel that teaches you how to read it. The hunt for Caeseria - combing through archives, talking to half-demented bar patrons and landowners, avoiding murderous pimps, writing mediocre poetry - mirrors the hunt for Lima Belano that the center lays before us like a little chess board. It's a faux archive tangled with real archives of the forgotten avant-garde of Mexico City and the savage detectives, the what's-outside-the-windows is us, the readers, playing Bolaño's archive game however we choose to.
Imagining a fun little novella framed as an edited anthology of contemporary literary scholars writing increasingly delirious analyses of Lima and Belano based on the testimonies of this book.