A review by markeefe
Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño

3.5

Though a slim novel, this would have packed more punch as a novella. This strange tale, set around Pinochet's 1973 military takeover of Chile, is probably the oddest work of Bolaño's that I've read. But is it about what happens to the narrator's circle of young poets and their instructors under military rule? Or is it about an enigmatic poet/air force pilot/serial killer and how his actions affect the life of the narrator and his close friend? The latter, to me, was the far more compelling of the plot lines in Distant Star. When Bolaño digresses into the post-Pinochet lives of the narrator's two poetry instructors, the story loses steam. But the beginning and end of the book render it quite worthwhile, overall.