Customer Reviews

The Return

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I was a bit afraid about this book: I knew that Bolano had written two books of short stories, and that Last Evening's on Earth had selected stories from both of these. When I saw that the return was coming out, I was afraid that all of the best stories from those two collections were put into LEOE. However, as a die-hard Bolano fan, I immediately ordered it, and started reading it as soon as it was shipped.
Needless to say, I was not disappointed. The first story, a Soviet Union story about a man who reluctantly works for an old friend, has twists and turns, and is even creepy, in a subtle sort of way. These stories contain his usual kinds of characters: poets, detectives, pimps and prostitutes, and even characters from his novels (including Lalo Cura and Amalfitano from 2666.)
Granted, like Last Evenings on Earth, some of the stories pale in comparison to the others, but it also has stories that explore new ground for Bolano, such as the title story. I knew from the opening line:
"I have good news and bad news. The good news is that there is a life (of a kind) after this life. The bad news is that Jean-Claude Villeneuve is a necrophiliac."
..that it was going to be great, and it was.
If you loved Last Evenings on Earth, I can't imagine you'll be disappointed.
If you're new to Bolano, I'd spend a little less money and get Last Evenings on Earth or Amulet, but this collection is certainly worth reading.

Roberto Bolaño is deceased, sadly, but his phenomenal talent as one of the century's greatest writers lives on, thanks in great part to the dedication of Chris Andrews as his translator. In this new collection of short stories his style continues to mesmerize - long sentences without a lot of punctuation, many pages without a paragraph break, mixing voices within a conversation, flowing poetic phrases within raw descriptions of things usually just whispered or left unsaid - all of these attributes are here in a very fine collection of stories that bear re-reading frequently.

Bolaño jumps around the globe for new locations in this collection: he begins with a story in Moscow ('Snow") about the involvement with the narrator and a female high jumper who the narrator is to court for an obese criminal but ends up....never give away Bolaño's endings, another tale from Amalfitano about a strange Andalusian in Russia whose lack of understanding of languages poses problems, to Chile and Spain, and Southern California. His characters range from misfits, to a man who dies and becomes a ghost only to observe his body transported from a morgue to the mansion of a wealthy designer who just happens to be a necrophiliac, to a porn star working in Venice, California making movies until she discovers her hero from the past -'Jack' Holmes (an obvious play on the famous mightily endowed porn star John Holmes) who is fading away from AIDS, to an encounter between an athlete and a prostitute that is rich with messages of human communication. And of course much more.

Throughout this selection of thirteen stories Bolaño (with the help of Andrews) entertains, shocks, makes us laugh, and most of all makes us marvel at his command of the art of writing. This is a magnificent collection, another great book in the legacy of Roberto Bolaño. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, July 10

Think of Roberto Bolano's newest collection of short stories, The Return, as the cool, tasty treat you earned for finishing a heavy meal of either of his two major novels; The Savage Detectives or 2666. A true dessert, these stories are all New Yorker reader friendly; crisp sentences that move the action briskly along. Heck, we'll even go so far as to call this the perfect beach book -- a Chilean beach, it's true -- but a beach nonetheless!

If the reader of this review intends on buying the Return, as I did, on the strength of Last Evenings on Earth (as well, perhaps, on Bolaño's novels and poetry), one's reaction will likely be some degree of disappointment, mild to medium in my case. The Return certainly is an icier affair than Last Evenings, containing nothing comparable in terms of intimacy or warmth of the kind found in "Sensini" or "Gomez Palacio" and without much of a tradeoff in the absence of those qualities. While the number of voices has expanded, the formal range in this collection is narrower, a characteristic that proves fatal given that the stories of The Return are also pretty much uniformly weak(er). For instance take "Snow", the story that opens the collection. A conceit familiar to readers of the author's other works is established within the first pages - a story within a story - but unlike, say, "Anne Moore's Life", the approach in this case is clunky, purely functional, bordering on arbitrary (that is, the story buried inside "Snow" could stand alone; the listener is wholly absent, his presence in this case merely flourish, a missed opportunity). And "Anne Moore's Life" was itself a weaker one...which on the surface might seem not to bode well for the rest. However there are some gems. One example is the title story, near-pitch black in mood yet augmented with a sort of zany sense of humor by the charmingly hapless ghost-narrator at the center of tale. The story is a nicely realized imaginative departure, acting as a sort of respite as well as proving to be one of Bolaño's funniest shorts. But overall the lows outnumber the highs, of which there are only a few. Don't let the pun I've just noticed I slipped into this paragraph (and now refuse to take out) distract from the crucial point: completists are likelier to enjoy or excuse The Return. Everyone else has been apprised of the mixed (at best) experience to follow from reading this slight collection.