![]() ![]() The tales are simply told, little embellished and packed full of characters that range from listless to enigmatic. Some are full tales, others are but a snapshot or something that happened, someone they meet as they wander aimlessly from one day to the next, all the while 1973 in Chile looms in the background, remembered, a shadow that follows the narrators throughout their lives. ![]() ![]() The characters search others out or push them away, or seemingly collide with different people almost by accident, yet the collision leaves an imprint on their memory and their life, which they recount on the page. Almost all of them are a long way from home, meeting with other exiles, begrudgingly accepting them in their new surroundings, as they recount stories from their past, almost all of them surreal and shot through with all the melancholy of dusk. Slow, sad, mesmerising, Bolano captivates in this collection of shorts, narrated as it is by his cast of vagabond and exiled writers and failed or mediocre poets. The Countess doesn’t move either and for a moment they both stand there in silence, looking into each others eyes as if they had known each other (or loved and hated each other) in another life. ![]() He nods, assures her he will go down immediately, but doesn’t move. Once, he thinks, long ago, she must have been pretty, but now she is a jumble of flesh and twitchy sinews. ![]()
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