I love Roberto Bolano’s writing style. His ability to weave rich language into a flowing narrative is in the class of Borges and Garcia-Marquez. I’m so happy I discovered him through a friend. I just bought three of his other books.
Distant Star is a dark tale of people who are not who they say they are. Chili is going through a revolution and coup and poets are disappearing or being thrown in jail. This opens the door for further darkness to fly under the radar screen. Those dark days color the life of our narrator and everyone he knows.
The character of Alberto Ruiz-Tagle, an air force pilot, displays his gruesome deeds in a photographic murderous art show in an academic setting is the epitome of this darkness and the passive reaction to a murderer. The entire book crackles with Ruiz-Tagle’s monstrous deeds in a fractured country and psyche.
A story that could only be told in the aftermath of Pinochet’s Chile. Richard Eder commented in the The New York Times: “None has done it in so dark and glittering a fashion as Roberto Bolano.”
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