Selected Product: | The Savage Detectives: A Novel Paperback Author: Roberto Bolano Publisher: Picador Release Date: 2008-03-04 ISBN-10: 0312427484 ISBN-13: 9780312427481 List Price: $15.00 Average Customer Rating: | | 2666: A Novel ISBN-10: 0374100144 ISBN-13: 9780374100148 List Price:$30.00 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao ISBN-10: 1594483299 ISBN-13: 9781594483295 List Price:$14.00 Out Stealing Horses: A Novel ISBN-10: 0312427085 ISBN-13: 9780312427085 List Price:$14.00 Then We Came to the End: A Novel ISBN-10: 031601639X ISBN-13: 9780316016391 List Price:$13.99 Tree of Smoke: A Novel ISBN-10: 0312427743 ISBN-13: 9780312427740 List Price:$16.00 |
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National Bestseller In this dazzling novel, the book that established his international reputation, Roberto Bolaño tells the story of two modern-day Quixotes--the last survivors of an underground literary movement, perhaps of literature itself--on a tragicomic quest through a darkening, entropic universe: our own. The Savage Detectives is an exuberant, raunchy, wildly inventive, and ambitious novel from one of the greatest Latin American authors of our age. A lot to read, very little payoff | Customer Rating: | The book is very well written, but I just kept asking myself what was the point of 500+ well-written pages about characters that I found to be fairly cliche, and not a lot happens. In other words, I found the overall book to be just self indulgent: "here - look how well I can write about nothing in particular!".
Full disclosure: I grew up in Brazil and mostly studied there, so the characters in this book felt a lot like the middle class marxists that I met in high school and college. Maybe if you're meeting these characters for the first time through the book they'll be more interesting. | All that glitters is not gold | Customer Rating: | I hesitate to criticize Roberto Bolano too much, because many people find great enjoyment in his work. You might be one of them. I simply did not like this novel.
Much has been written about the brilliance of The Savage Detectives, but I found it merely unusual, not brilliant. There are parallels to The Dharma Bums, with the aimless wanderings of the characters, their deliberate bohemian lives, and their radical ideas about literature, politics and sexuality. There is extensive discussion about literature, but it is mostly an absurd discussion, often written for laughs that I could not appreciate. The nihilism of the author, reflected in his characters, may strike a cord in those of similar outlook. Unfortunately, I did not like the main characters. They steal from helpless people, smoke dope, sell drugs, and occasionally write poetry which you never get to read. Worse, I have the impression that Bolano did not care for them either.
Reading this novel was a depressing experience. I find it difficult to enjoy a novel unless I care about someone in the book. Great literature does not have to be enjoyable, but there was more missing from this story than enjoyment. His wandering, discursive style is difficult to follow. Perhaps Bolano was making a point about pointlessness, but after several hundred pages, I didn't care anymore. I don't believe that this book deserves all of the praise that has been lavished upon it. | excellent read | Customer Rating: | | It was a great read. I have read other books by this author and I was pretty sure I would love this and I did. | A masterpiece | Customer Rating: | | The Savage Detectives, the Mexican novel of a Chilean writer that spent his last years of life in Barcelona, is one of the few masterpieces that Latin America has produced during the last years. The language skills, the rhythm, the story, the characters, everything is first class literature in this "Looking for a lost Poetess" novel. In spite of the high quality values of his next (posthumous) novel 2666, Roberto Bolaño reached with the Savage Detectives a height that is very difficult to meet again. As stated in the comment title: a masterpiece. | Couldn't Keep My Attention | Customer Rating: | | The worst book of the year for me. I quit after 150 pages. I figured an author should be able to develop characters and some sense of story by then. Didn't happen. |
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