2666

In my excessive boredom, I have sought refuge in fiction. Predicting a large chunk of time will be on my hands in the near future, I decided I couldn't choose just any novel- I am a fast reader and, often to my own annoyance, finish books far too quickly. So I reached for the fattest book that people have recommended to me in recent months- 2666 by Roberto Bolano. At 1,150 pages, I hope it will keep me going awhile. But I can see some late night frenzied reads are ahead of me- it is all so addictive! From the start I knew I would be hooked. The writing is immense, and the story hops about in a strangely lateral way, linking people to places and back to people. Somewhere by the first third, after the group of literature academics, whose story I have become obsessed by, disappear into the folds of the novel, I marvel at how far this work is from the magical realism which has characterised/caricaturized Latin American literature for the past half century. This is a grimly realistic approach, as soon becomes clear as the book shifts from the world of European academia to mass murder in the grimy northern Mexican city of Santa Teresa (ie: Juarez). Bolano's vision of the world depicts a dangerous place: the book swings through endless descriptions of corpses, murder and rape as Bolano's writing merges the boundary between fiction and documentary. Some critics have already called this book the first great piece of literature in the 21^st century, but unfortunately it will be Bolano's last. Perhaps due to years of heroin abuse, he died of hepatic failure at age 50, just after handing in the manuscript of his masterpiece.