The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano

In the past year, there has been a lot of buzz on Roberto Bolano. I've read on the internet, in newspapers, and in magazines about how amazing and innnovative his work is. Naturally, I wanted to experience it for myself. I actually bought The Savage Detectives in August before I went on vacation, but never got around to reading it until now.


The book is broken up into three sections. The first section is a diary of a young Mexican poet named Juan Garcia Madero who joins the visceral realists, a group of young poets. The leaders of the group are Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima. Madero describes his interactions with other members of the group. The second section of the book makes up its bulk. It consists of a series of interviews with many different people who knew Belano and Lima. The interviews basically describe that person's interactions with either one or both of them. The third section of the book picks up Madero's diary where it left off, as he, Belano, Lima, and a prostitute named Lupe escape Mexico City to get away from her pimp. As they travel, they search for Cesarea Tinajero, a poet from the previous generation.

I'm very ambivalent about this book. I don't feel that it is worthy of all the praise that it's received. The book was well written and I really enjoyed the third section. However, the first and the second sections of the book were honestly pretty boring. I found some of the characters and interviews featured in the second section of the book interesting, but the majority were mundane and repetitive. This may have been the point, but I didn't really care. When I finished the book, I was left with some questions, such as who was conducting the interviews. I think that if I went back through the second section of the book I could've figured it out, but I didn't want to. If I could go back, knowing what happened, I would not have read this book. However, the writing was high quality and some parts were really good, so I will probably end up reading another book by Bolano at some point.