The Savage Detectives -Roberto Bolano

-Buy this book.


-About the author (Wikipedia)


-Review from The New Yorker


-NYTimes Sunday Book Review


"I picked up The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño with high hopes. There are few pleasures rarer than when an American publisher begins releasing translations of a foreign writer all at once. When you feel you’ve exhausted the writers you love most and become overly familiar with the establishment canon it gives you renewed faith in the possibility of something new. I had not ever run across Mr. Bolaño’s work before, but I had read a few reviews online that had prepared me for a novel in the traditions of Celine or Kerouac perhaps. The reality is that, at least in translation, The Savage Detectives is not a work of distinction. It reads in fact very much like a deliberate pastiche of Celine with a fair dose of Henry Miller thrown in for good measure. For some reason it doesn’t ring true and I was left with the sense that he embarked on a literary shell game and lost track of precisely who was fooling whom." -edwinesmith 


"I give up. I don’t know how to review The Savage Detectives.

Everyone told me I was supposed to love this book, but I didn’t. There, that’s a review. Not a good review, but there. I can’t remember a book ever taking me so long to finish or a book that I put down so often. When I truly love a book, I am moved. Often physically. Sometimes I have to stand up to read a book, I’m so moved. That’s a good book. (I never had to stand up during The Savage Detectives, although I often had to force myself to read thoroughly and not just skim). When I truly love a book, I’m a little sad and deflated when it’s over. I know a book is great if I’m compelled to go back and immediately reread sections. (Again, with Detectives, this didn’t happen). But it looks like I’m trashing the book. I shouldn’t. It has a lot going for it."    -ed biblioklept