From the Bookshelf of Constant Reader…

2666

Roberto Bolaño,

Natasha Wimmer (Translator)

Start date: January 15, 2010

Finish date: March 15, 2010

Discussion: Reading List

Discussion leader: Jane

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Reading List

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What Members Thought

Jan 14, 2018 Laura rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: mtbr-challenge-2018, 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, read-2018, viciados-em-livros, books-on-books, e-books, fiction-20th-century, latin-american-literature

WHAT a magnificent book!!

Even if the author wrote this book in 5 parts to be published separately, once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down.

About the book: the 1st part describes a group of four European literary critics, who have forged their careers around the reclusive German novelist Benno von Archimboldi. The 2nd part concentrates on Óscar Amalfitano, a Chilean professor of philosophy who arrives at the University of Santa Teresa from Barcelona with his young adult daughter Rosa. ...more

14 likes · Like · see review

Jan 19, 2009 Harold rated it it was amazing

Shelves: latin-america, favorites

Bolano is a great writer and imho the translator did a terrific job. As to it's being unfinished or not matters little. It's so near the end that one can fill in one's own ending. Bolano's writing puts me in mind of DeLillo, specifically Underworld, but Bolano is ultimately more focused. I'll have to read The Savage Detectives afters something in between. Note added 1/7/10: I read The Savage Detectives and as much as I liked 2666 I have to give the edge to TSD. There is a similarity of form betw ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

Feb 04, 2024 Dree rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: in-translation, continental-europe, central-south-america, 2024-reads

A novel in 5 parts? 5 linked novels?

Interesting, exhausting, glad I read it but it is just too long and not as tight as it might have been.

We have academics in search of the mysterious German writer Archimboldi they all study. It's almost a club--and no one knows what happened to the author. These 3 go searching in Santa Teresa, Mexico, where rumor has it he has gone.

We have a drafted WW2 German soldier, Hans Reiter, who leaves his mother and sister and goes with his unit to Romania, Russia, and ...more

4 likes · Like · see review

Feb 20, 2010 Cdrueallen rated it liked it

During the long months it took me to read 2666 I was convinced it was an important work of fiction, but I only occasionally enjoyed reading it, and now, three months since I finished it, there's not much from it that's stuck with me. Two characters, and an ambiance described perfectly by the quote from Baudelaire that Bolano uses as a preface to his novel: "an oasis of horror in a desert of boredom". Except that the horror is to repetitive and mundane to be any sort of oasis.

The first character ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Jun 15, 2011 Fajar rated it really liked it

A colossal, but delicious work. One that required me to admit that sometimes I struggled to understand, while at the same time allowed me to bask in its grandeur.

Comparable to Joyce's "Ulysses", at least to me. ...more

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