The Secret of Evil

April 30, 2012
This engaging posthumous collection from the prolific Chilean novelist and poet Bolaño (2666) comprises the (largely unedited) vignettes, short stories, and speeches found on the author's computer at the time of his death in 2003. Characters and themes from his novels reappear in these stories: from The Savage Detectives's Arturo Belano, to musings on the state of Latin American literature, to the lives of tortured artists, including a disappeared British musician and a group of intellectuals in Paris caught in a "complex and subtle web of relations." Bolaño's quiet, sparse prose is punctuated by moments of eruptive violence, including terrifying scenes from a disturbingly autobiographical "B-grade schlock" zombie film, or a journalist covering a gruesome murder, imagining herself in the victim's stead. Bolaño crafts characters isolated from their surroundings and compellingly observing the humanity around themâa teenager "dissatisfied with everything" in his life stays up late and listens to his upstairs neighbors having sex in "Colonia Lindavista," while a recovering heroin addict spends his days observing beachgoers "with silent tears running down his face" in "Beach." As the narrator of the titular story declares, his tale is "incomplete, because stories like this don't have an ending;" nevertheless, Bolaño's writing is reliably intriguing.

June 1, 2012

It seems as if readers can't get enough of Bolano these days. After the blockbuster reception of two major works (The Savage Detectives and 2666) came a slew of additional and occasionally lesser-quality works. This is the latest addition to the panoply of posthumous works in that latter category. These 19 stories were probably in various stages of progress when Bolano died in 2003. However, in light of his trademark open endings, it is difficult to determine how finished they really are; some seem more fragmentary than others. The most rewarding are the three translated by Natasha Wimmer that were published previously in Between Parentheses. Most of the stories, which lack thematic unity, are very short and some are experimental: five are a single paragraph long; the five-page "Beach" is only one sentence. VERDICT This collection expands Bolano's available short stories but overall does little to enhance his growing reputation as one of the major prose writers of contemporary Spanish. The volume is a mixed bag, with some highlights offset by some stories that, frankly, should have stayed on his hard drive.--Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC Lib., Dublin, OH

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.