|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epicurus.com - The Savage Detectives: A Novel
|
List Price: $15.00
Our Price: $10.20
Your Save: $ 4.80 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Picador
|
Average Customer Rating:   
|
|
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 863.64
EAN: 9780312427481
ISBN: 0312427484
Label: Picador
Manufacturer: Picador
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 672
Publication Date: 2008-03-04
Publisher: Picador
Release Date: 2008-03-04
Studio: Picador
|
|
|
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
|
National Bestseller In this dazzling novel, the book that established his international reputation, Roberto Bolaño tells the story of two modern-day Quixotes--the last survivors of an underground literary movement, perhaps of literature itself--on a tragicomic quest through a darkening, entropic universe: our own. The Savage Detectives is an exuberant, raunchy, wildly inventive, and ambitious novel from one of the greatest Latin American authors of our age.
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: A lot to read, very little payoff
Comment: The book is very well written, but I just kept asking myself what was the point of 500+ well-written pages about characters that I found to be fairly cliche, and not a lot happens. In other words, I found the overall book to be just self indulgent: "here - look how well I can write about nothing in particular!".
Full disclosure: I grew up in Brazil and mostly studied there, so the characters in this book felt a lot like the middle class marxists that I met in high school and college. Maybe if you're meeting these characters for the first time through the book they'll be more interesting.
Customer Rating:
Summary: All that glitters is not gold
Comment: I hesitate to criticize Roberto Bolano too much, because many people find great enjoyment in his work. You might be one of them. I simply did not like this novel.
Much has been written about the brilliance of The Savage Detectives, but I found it merely unusual, not brilliant. There are parallels to The Dharma Bums, with the aimless wanderings of the characters, their deliberate bohemian lives, and their radical ideas about literature, politics and sexuality. There is extensive discussion about literature, but it is mostly an absurd discussion, often written for laughs that I could not appreciate. The nihilism of the author, reflected in his characters, may strike a cord in those of similar outlook. Unfortunately, I did not like the main characters. They steal from helpless people, smoke dope, sell drugs, and occasionally write poetry which you never get to read. Worse, I have the impression that Bolano did not care for them either.
Reading this novel was a depressing experience. I find it difficult to enjoy a novel unless I care about someone in the book. Great literature does not have to be enjoyable, but there was more missing from this story than enjoyment. His wandering, discursive style is difficult to follow. Perhaps Bolano was making a point about pointlessness, but after several hundred pages, I didn't care anymore. I don't believe that this book deserves all of the praise that has been lavished upon it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: excellent read
Comment: It was a great read. I have read other books by this author and I was pretty sure I would love this and I did.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece
Comment: The Savage Detectives, the Mexican novel of a Chilean writer that spent his last years of life in Barcelona, is one of the few masterpieces that Latin America has produced during the last years. The language skills, the rhythm, the story, the characters, everything is first class literature in this "Looking for a lost Poetess" novel. In spite of the high quality values of his next (posthumous) novel 2666, Roberto Bolaño reached with the Savage Detectives a height that is very difficult to meet again. As stated in the comment title: a masterpiece.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Couldn't Keep My Attention
Comment: The worst book of the year for me. I quit after 150 pages. I figured an author should be able to develop characters and some sense of story by then. Didn't happen.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
