They are characters living in the margins, on the edge, in constant flight from nightmarish threats. Imbued with 'the melancholy folklore of exile', as Roberto Bolano once put it, and set largely in the world of the Chilean diaspora in Central America and Europe, the narrators of these stories are usually writers grappling with private quests (Bolano's beloved 'failed generation'), who typically speak in the first person, as if giving a deposition, like witnesses to a crime. This is certainly true of the fourteen stories here, the first collection by the universally acclaimed Chilean author to be published in English. Ernest Hemingway once said that a good story was like an iceberg what is visible is always smaller than the part that remains hidden beneath the water, which confers intensity, mystery, power and meaning on what floats on the surface. Imbued with 'the melancholy folklore of exile', as Roberto Bolano once put it, and set largely in.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |