false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175626682m/537640.jpg 537640 4 <B>The first story collection in English by Roberto Bolaño &#151;"the real thing and the rarest" (Susan Sontag).</B><BR><BR>Roberto Bolaño's story collection <I>Last Evenings on Earth</I> was acclaimed by Francine Prose in <I>The New York Times Book Review</I> as "something extraordinarily beautiful and (at least to me) entirely new.... Reading Roberto Bolaño is like hearing the secret story, being shown the fabric of the particular, watching the tracks of art and life merge at the horizon and linger there like a dream from which we awake inspired to look more attentively at the world."<BR><BR>"The melancholy folklore of exile," as Bolaño once put it, pervades these fourteen haunting stories. His narrators are usually writers living on the margins and grappling with private (and often unlucky) quests. Set in the Chilean exile diaspora of Latin American and Europe, and peopled by Bolano's beloved "failed generation," these stories are unimaginably gripping. One story begins: "Mauricio Silva, also known as 'The Eye,' always tried to avoid violence, even at the risk of being considered a coward, but violence, real violence, is unavoidable, at least for those of us born in Latin America during the fifties and sixties and were about twenty years old at the time of Salvador Allende's death." <I>Last Evenings on Earth</I> has been hailed as "sheer brilliance" (<I>The San Francisco Chronicle</I>), "vaguely, pervasively frightening" (<I>The Nation</I>) and "brilliant" (<I>Kirkus Reviews</I>). The stories, as <I>Publishers Weekly</I> noted, are "perfectly calibrated: Bolaño limns the capacity of a voice to carry despair without shading into bitterness." Contains stories previously published in Spanish in <i>Llamadas Telefónicas</i> and <i>Putas Asesinas</i>. 61219 2006 Last Evenings on Earth (New Directions Paperbook) total:538|5:186|4:235|3:98|2:16|1:3| 538 2199 911 112 4 10 false false Wed Apr 09 21:52:40 -0700 2008 Thu Apr 10 07:41:00 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 4 false false Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 26 12:13:17 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 26 13:14:10 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 2 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 15 13:02:56 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 15 13:04:40 -0700 2007 Distant Star.)

Well, I don't know. I understand that Bolaño is considered one of the finest modern writers (that is, of the last quarter-century); Susan Sontag told us so. And I can see why: he's very smart, very literary, very inventive, and he does...more...]]> 4 1 false false Sat Oct 25 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Oct 22 17:26:01 -0700 2008 Mon Oct 27 09:39:34 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Sat Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Tue Jul 10 17:52:20 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 10 18:09:31 -0700 2007 Last Evenings on Earth was the first book I read by the late Roberto Bolaño, and it's still my favorite. (I really liked Distant Star, and I've started but not finished Amulet, By Night in Chile, and The Savage Detectives). Unlike those novels, Last Evenings is a collection of short stories.
...more...]]> 5 1 false false Wed Jun 27 15:47:19 -0700 2007 Sat Aug 18 20:00:52 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Feb 15 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Feb 21 12:26:25 -0800 2008 Thu Feb 21 12:31:06 -0800 2008 This was a delightful book of short stories. Someone recently turned me on to Roberto Bolano...he is good if you like Haruki Murakami and those types of Japanese authors with a spare style. Various characters get tipsy and galavant around Chile or Spain rath...more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Jul 22 21:41:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 22 22:23:16 -0700 2009
I'm going to try once more and a little harder to get at why I think he's great, though I know it's not exactly a minority opinion these days.

Take Borges, the reason you probably love him, if you do-- t...more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Nov 24 12:43:21 -0800 2008 Mon Nov 24 12:43:33 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri May 29 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue May 26 22:09:08 -0700 2009 Fri May 29 20:24:23 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Mar 23 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 19 17:56:34 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 23 12:19:57 -0700 2009 2666 - thankfully, perhaps, since the last section has been found(?).) I enjoyed the Savage Detectives and read it at the righ...more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Nov 26 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Nov 22 15:31:49 -0800 2009 Thu Nov 26 08:35:16 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Jun 26 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Jun 18 12:32:32 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 26 21:22:12 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 22 08:40:36 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 22 08:44:43 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Jun 23 02:41:29 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 15 16:58:08 -0700 2009 Last Evenings on Earth, are fascinating sketches of the other America - South America. Roberto Bolano gives voice to characters of relative insignificance in lands that have been considered less than fertile in today's modern world. These pe...more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Apr 27 06:16:29 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 23 06:45:16 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 27 06:16:29 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Mar 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Mar 06 11:32:13 -0800 2009 Fri Mar 20 07:22:01 -0700 2009 Bolano w...more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Jan 01 14:27:17 -0800 2009 Sat Feb 14 10:10:11 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Aug 02 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 01 08:52:49 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 02 15:23:34 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Nov 16 06:58:53 -0800 2008 Thu Nov 13 20:07:10 -0800 2008 Sun Nov 16 06:58:53 -0800 2008 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=537640