The Savage Detectives: A Novel
by Roberto Bolano
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Book Reviews of The Savage Detectives: A Novel
Book Review: kerouac meets chile
Summary: 5 Stars
Read it if you want to hear the voice of Chile in exile from the point of view of the failed generation coming of age. Would that we had contemporary voices in Los Estados Unidos de Norte America with such life in them. Perhaps we do, and I can think of some. But Bolaño could serve as one mentor to the disenfranchised of my children's generation, i.e., any people in their 20's and 30's who could not be featured on an episode of Real Housewives; those who would be in exile; those feel that they are already in exile in their own country; those who would refuse that exile yet know no way of coming home.Book Review: A lot to read, very little payoff
Summary: 2 Stars
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.
Book Review: a very long book, a very boring book
Summary: 1 Stars
This book received such great billing and Bolano was referred to as the new Garcia Marquez. Since our book group began 26+ years ago with One Hundred Years of Solitude, I suggested we read it. Why it received such rave reviews is beyond me. 40 + narrators in the second half? Does this seem just a tad too many to keep up with? Plot line? Characters worth reading about? Half of us finished the book, the other half didn't think it was worth the time. Before you put money into buying this book, check to see how many people are willing to sell theirs. I know Garcia Marquez and Bolano is no Marquez.Book Review: Interesting at first. Boring after the first couple of days.
Summary: 2 Stars
This could have been a great book. At least that's the feeling I got from reading the first chapter (don't judge wrong, it is more than a hundred pages). But then there's that middle section of the book that completely killed my enthusiasm and attention. The author shows innumerable interviews with people that at first seem random but later in the book could actually have a point. I say "actually" because I never got through this. After more than a hundred pages of this section I gave up. This might be the perfect novel many critics and newspapers have claimed. Good for them.Book Review: A masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
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.