Roberto Bolaño. I love the way your name rolls off my tongue. Roberto Bolaño.

Roberto, my dear, you have a filthy mouth. Not that I mind exactly, I like a little filth in my life from time to time. Keeps things interesting. Keeps me on my toes.

Your little collection was so thought provoking that as I read, I often found my mind going off on little tangents. Like... is the solicitation of prostitutes really as commonplace as you make it sound? Have any of my friends solicited prostitutes? My boyfr More...

This was probably the Bolaño book I've liked the least, and I still liked it. Bolaño appeared to readers like me, unaware of him before he was already a sensation (and recently departed), fully-formed, in possession of a weirdly snide and detached brand of river-deep lyricism and that is present in these pieces. He has a curious way of framing a story inside a story and that trait is particularly pronounced in this collection, in fact it made me wonder if we were reaching diminishing returns at More...

Stories that Weave Surrealism with the Raw Mundane

Roberto Bolaño is deceased, sadly, but his phenomenal talent as one of the century's greatest writers lives on, thanks in great part to the dedication of Chris Andrews as his translator. In this new collection of short stories his style continues to mesmerize - long sentences without a lot of punctuation, many pages without a paragraph break, mixing voices within a conversation, flowing poetic phrases within raw descriptions of things usually jus More...

the return is bolaño's second book of short stories to appear in english. culled from the same two collections (llamadas telefónicas & putas asesinas) as the stories in last evenings on earth, these thirteen tales are trademark bolaño. the return is rife with the themes that characterize his other works; sex, violence, art, poetry, and the underworld. wayward & lowlife characters abound in the usual forms of detectives, criminals, porn stars, writers, and expatriates. the semi-autobiogra More...

"I have good news and bad news. The good news is that there is life (of a kind) after this life. The bad news is that Jean-Claude Villeneuve is a necrophiliac."

These opening lines of the title story can be read as either knockouts or kind of smug/gimmicky. And that seems like the magic of Bolano--staking a story to a premise that may seem cute or contrived and then disarming his readers with moments of unlikely sympathy/understanding. It is literary hard drugs for me.

And this seems like a parti More...

The Return consists of thirteen of Bolaño's short stories. Most are violent and slightly surreal, consistent with Bolaño's body of work. A few of the stories contained characters from 2666, which I liked, as I wondered, of course, if they were character sketches he created while writing his lengthy, best-known work or if they were supposed to be a part of the novel. The last story clearly contained himself as a character. Some of the stories warranted a five on their own, and some did not, which More...

My exploration into Bolano’s writing is mostly backwards. I started with 2666, loved it and read The Savage Detectives, loved it and read By Night in Chile, and then by chance found this collection of short stories entitled The Return. It’s mostly his short stories from the 1990s compiled and translated by Chris Andrews, an excellent collection. In reading Bolano backwards, I can see where he used certain elements from these stories into his later works. 2666 and The Savage Detectives are his ma More...

Thirteen wondrous short stories of returns—the return to a native land, the desire to return to family or country, return to the scene of the crime, returning to life, or not-life, returns of every imagining—thirteen stories for the Bolaño fan or those new to his work. Readers familiar with Bolaño might wonder when New Directions will finally publish everything extant by the author, as indeed they must, but if you’re wondering if the best of his works have already been translated and published ( More...

read more than 2/3 and it is vintage Bolano (and of course excellent by and large - the first story Snow is just awesome and the rest so far are pretty good, while two are included at least partly in the recent Woes of the True policeman novel too)

Finished the collection and it had 3 outstanding stories, Snow, Cell mates and Buba with the rest very good (Clara, Another Russian Tale - this appears in Woes, William Burns - this is related to Woes, Murdering Whores, Prefiguration of lalo Cura, Meet More...

this is the first collection of bolano's short fiction i've read. these stories are mostly voice-driven, monologue-y, all about the telling, often framed -- and they swerve in surprising weird ways. some are more noir-y, some are more fantastic (The Return is from the perspective of a ghost witnessing his body being handled by a necrophiliac), some are plain weird. favorites: The Prefiguration of Lalo Cura (see Jiyoon Lee's short essay on this here: http://www.montevidayo.com/semen-film...), Ano More...

A collection of short stories from the late Bolano. It's odd that, for me, at least, Bolano doesn't sing until he taps into the life of woman who's had enough of the macho BS culture (“Murderous Whores”). There's a tenderness when he writes as a woman (even a murderous one) that he generally doesn't allow himself when he writes as a man (exceptions would be “Buba,” a soccer-themed story of brotherhood and magic, and “Prefiguration of Lalo Cura,” about a boy raised on porn sets). Bolano is angry More...

I was really impressed with this collection of short stories, and I am definitely going to pick up more by this amazing author. I thought the stories were selected very well. Among my favorite were Murderous Whores, in which a man in a televised congo line is tortured by a delusional groupie. The title story is perfectly twisted, using a premise introduced by Swayze, Whoopi and Moore in Ghost and twisting it to include necromancing. I would recommend this collection to people who have felt like More...

This guy will probably win the Nobel prize someday because he is so creative and he is from South America. I read such a rave review of his works in the NYT so I had to check it out. I am prejudiced because I really don't like contemporary short stories and this is a collection of his short stories. That being said, the title story is interesting: a guy dies on the disco floor and his spirit follows his body to the morgue where it is used and abused while he looks on. Why can't anyone today writ More...

finished Roberto Bolano's "The Return", a series of stories about reappearing, and reacquainting with the dead and those who have been lost and now found. It's middling Bolano at its best, (since I've read his juggernaut, 2666, and the masterpieces Last Evenings on Earth and Nazi Literature in the Americas) though it is always infused with his trademark sardonic sense of humor, and overzealous empathy towards those left behind. The best story is "Cell-Mates" and a close second is the hilarious, More...

The more I read his stories, the more I wish Bolano were still alive...
Some of the stories in the collection are among his best. Wonderful. Leaving you in the midst of nowhere, mesmerized ...

Just a few random picks:

from "Photos":
... and suddenly enters (though in the village where he happens to be stranded there is no such thing as a sudden entry) the kingdom of the thousand and one nights of literature and memory... and he remembers having seen some of those poets already, many years ago, may More...

Roberto Bolaño's eerily powerful style is present in these stories, some of necessity more effective than others but none negligible.

These are deceptive works, with subjects not quite expressed but hovering somehow on the edge of the readers' consciousness. Often this can be understood as the pain of dislocation and exile resulting from political horror at home. Or maybe these characters would be as they are in any location, but they, and we, will never know. Wherever stories are set we find a More...

I've never read Bolaño before. I don't know anything about him, his books, his publication history. I know that he is dead and that he wrote 2666. I also know that this time next year none of the above will be true. The Return has changed me in a way I'm not sure I'm able to articulate, but I'll try. Here's a writer who has united his love of genre fiction and passion for literature in a way that makes them inseparable. I don't know how you talk about The Return without talking about political t More...

Malam minggu lepas saya nampak Bolano, dekat gerai burger Uptown Damnsara. Saya lintas kawasan tu sapa abang kawasan di situ dan dia kata pada saya, hang kenai budak tu. Yang mana, saya tanya. Yang pakai ceghemin mata bulat, mulut belemoih dengan burger tu. Saya kata, oh, Bolano. Kenai gitu-gitu je. Dia kata dia penulih. Hang pecaya tak? Rambut panjang macam Tarzan. Ada hati nak jadi penulis. Abang kawasan tu, namanya Jim Beng Beng - yang mungkin lucu bila kita dengar hinggalah kita tau yang tia More...

Whenever I start reading a Bolano book, I always think that I'm not going to be impressed. I've read several of his books now. But each time, each time, I'm excited and surprised. This one wasn't the absolute top in list of Bolano's books, but that still makes it awesome. At times, creepy and scary, but always some humor. I'm always impressed by the way that he can make seemingly horrifying characters likable.

Found this at the library, new books-14 day checkout. The remaining stories from Putas Asesinas and Llamadas Telefónicas that didn't end up in Last Evenings on Earth. These being left overs, my expectations were not high. That being said there are some very good stories in this book and if you need a Bolano fix you will not be let down.

Boleno’s stories are hypnotic in their bleakness. Life is a haphazard ride down a slow river – it’s not the thrill of rapids, or the heightened attention required by fast water – but rather a passage during which this happens and that happens. Circumstances control. A person’s character is his sealed tomb. The best of these stories are like late-night tales overheard in a bar.

Another handful of weird twists from Bolano, from John Holmes and a German pornographer to detective-torturers and a few glimpses of Sr. Belano himslef. Endlessly inventive, often painful and very funny.

As always, stories that glint and glitter like broken glass in a dark alleyway -- Bolano doesn't disappoint. This is the second collection of his short stories that I've read, and my admiration continues to grow.

I read one book of his short stories, "Last Evenings on Earth," and I think that the short story form can really catch Bolano at his best. Looking forward to this one.

Placed on my pile of To-Reads after hearing Francisco Goldman reading and discussing Bolaño on the New Yorker fiction podcast with Deborah Treisman.

Sort of like a more sinister Calvino, a naughtier, less academic Borges, a well-travelled Jim Harrison.

As in all collections, some are better than others. But the best ... how this man wrote this much this well ...

Have yet to be disappointed with Bolaño. Ever. Just inhale the dude.

This is a collection of short stories. If we could rate with half stars this would have gotten a four and 1/2. I'm taking off a half star because in a collection of five star stories there were two that I couldn't get into. I'll return to them down the line and if I do get into them I'll modify this rating. Bolano can write about life, relationships, mundane situations and make it all very interesting. In the hands of a lesser writer it just wouldn't work, but he makes it work. Bolano is a great More...