The Savage Detectives: A Novel by Roberto Bolano
|
List Price: Our Price: $7.02 You Save: $8.98 (56%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $2.29 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Savage Detectives: A Novel
Book Review: The Writer's Writer
Summary: 5 Stars
Before reading this novel I was completely unfamiliar with Roberto Bolano's work, after...he's one of my favorite writers. I went into this not knowing what expect because of the title, "The Savage Detectives". This novel doesn't have too much to do with detectives though. Its all about writers, poets, scholars, journalists, intellectuals,etc. If you are interested in any of that. Go get this book immediately. Not to mention its an extremely fluid and easy read. More like a conversation with one of over fifty characters. I also recommend 2666 by Bolano. Very similiar in structure, but a much darker story. I believe Bolano is very much a writer's writer.Book Review: An excellent book
Summary: 5 Stars
I think this is Bolano's best work, and one of the best books I have ever read. It displays an exceptional writing style that enmeshes you in its own world. The profusion of characters made it a little difficult to follow at the start, but quickly I was totally absorbed, and the wealth of characters brought a depth of plot I have never found in another book. What intrigued me the most was the difference in the perception of events as viewed from their multiple perspectives. I have also read "2666" and "The Skating Rink", and while each one has its own individual style, collectively they are uniquely Bolano, and well worth reading also.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 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.Book Review: Dirge in the void.
Summary: 5 Stars
A comedy? A tragedy? A tragic-comedy? A cryptographic exercise? A horror? A triumphal march? A Mystery? A comic monologue? A dirge in the void? Perhaps all nine. This is a brilliant novel. Complex. Literary. But not pedantic, didactic or doctrinaire. It's about being young in the world. It's about voice. It's hilarious. Erotic. Dark. A stalemate. A draw. A threnody. The Savage Detectives is a homage to Bolaño's comrades.