Customer Reviews

2666 (Vintage Espanol) (Spanish Edition)

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When asked what this book is about, initially it is very difficult to answer. Is it about the leading characters of each section? No, this book is a masterpiece about life as a whole told through a series of anecdotes and events that to the characters in the book seem unrelated. Only the reader has the privilege of connecting the dots of every minutia in 2666. Everything Roberto Bolaño gives us is related to something else, sometimes we find out what that relation is and sometimes we don't. Therein lies the grandness of this work.
It turns into a detective story whose only case is life itself (and the murders in Santa Teresa). In spite of this I wouldn't dare say it's a detective novel, it's just a simple book about a complex subject told through nightmarish visions, childish hopes, detective like determination, critic like analysis and the awe of someone who can't believe whats happening in his life and is enjoying the ride. It's about life and how we are to small to ever understand it and how our actions affect even those who are nowhere near us. it takes you on incredible ride through history, the world and the psyche of the characters.
The literary style of the book is complex. After the first few pages you fall into the world of 2666 and understand the thoughts of the characters as they are written in a poetic free flow form of prose.
In conclusion, this is an excellent book that becomes difficult to let go of.
Read it.

I waited a long time for the paperback edition in Spanish to appear on your site, but the book is well worth the wait. Extremely lengthy, but with considerable variety of voice and style between sections. Hard to think of another author who can create authentic, convincing characters of such different nationalities. I read it a second time almost immediately, and for me the novel's sections work better in a different order (I gather that Bolano died before putting the manuscript in final order, so I don't consider the one the editor selected to be sacred). Try it yourself -- break up the long section about the deaths of women in Juarez and read segments of it between the other sections instead of as one long entry, and see if you don't think I should have edited the book! But however you read it, don't miss Bolano's masterpiece.

Me leí esta novela porque estaba muy inquieto y deseoso de leer algo que hubiera escrito Bolaño debido a muchos comentarios que leí en los medios de comunicación sobre este autor y sus obras. Como leí que esta era «su mejor obra», me decidì a leerla. No está mal, pero la comparación con García Márquez le queda grande a este autor. Lamento decirlo, pero esta novela tiene mucho material que es prácticamente «relleno», lo que la hace innecesariamente larga. Más corta, le hubiera quedado mucho mejor.

Si hay algo que se puede decir de este texto es que, a pesar de estar inacabado, tiene dentro de sí la suma de lo mejor que pudo haber escrito Bolaño durante su vida. No solo contamos con la presencia de personajes que aparecen en varias novelas, estableciendo de esta forma una suerte de correspondencia entre cada una de ellas a la manera de las sagas, sino también de una obra que, un tanto a la manera de los escritores del boom latinoamericano, pretendía una totalidad del mundo ficcional que el autor creó, como mínimo, desde Los detectives salvajes.

Si estás buscando una historia de principio a fin, acabada en sus intrigas y sus detalles tal vez no sea esta la apropiada, pero sin duda es una obra referencial para conocer la evolución escritural de un autor prolífico que, inevitablemente,fue perfeccionándose entre libro y libro.

If you don't know Bolano, this is an excellent book to get to know him. However you must be patient because the first half of the book is very slow and the next three parts are not that fast either, but Bolano's writing if effect is excellent, he is a master of the Spanish language and the Novela. Good luck. I recommend this book.