Submitted by ThatCommanderShepard t3_10lud2a in books
I guess my first question would be to ask if anyone else here has read it, and further if they struggled with it as much as I did.
2666 is the final book my Spanish/Chilean author Roberto Bolaño. He generally considered to be a deeply accomplished author and my main draw towards him was comparisons to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who’s responsible for 100 years of solitude, probably my favorite book ever. By all accounts I can find 2666 is considered a surreal masterwork of the 21st century and yet…….. I’m bored
I don’t think I’m a slouch in reading books that can drag, lesser Joseph Heller novels, Murakamis 1Q84 are books that I have deeply enjoyed, but every time I pick up 2666 my brain begs me to put it back down. Clocking in at 1000 pages the book is purportedly about a mysterious serial killer in Mexico and a meditation on the nature of evil but if in my 300 pages of reading I’ve come across that I’d be hard pressed to tell you how.
The novel is split in to 5 novellas each with different perspectives and topics, but I’m down two and……. Wow do they meander. The entire second book is nothing but the middlingly boring story of a professor kind of losing his mind a little bit but nothing ever happens. And when things do happen, they’re presented with such flat disinterest and distance so as to rob them of any emotive weight.
Regardless, has anyone else had this experience with 2666 or has anyone been so let down by a supposedly incredible novel before
Warm-Enthusiasm-9534 t1_j5z5fe0 wrote
I'm might be the wrong person to answer, since I think 2666 is a masterpiece, but:
The second part is the least memorable. For the third and fourth parts, you can't really say "nothing ever happens".
I wouldn't say it's about "a mysterious serial killer". While the murders are central to the story, it's not a murder mystery. It's more about the relationship between the murders and the broader society.