I really liked this novel, it was a very intriguing and even suspenseful read. The fact that this novel is set in Mexico at a time of great political unrest is what makes it both unnerving and interesting at the same time. The opening lines of the story immediately catches the reader’s interest and successfully holds it throughout the novel. I even found myself pausing the read to research more on the general social and political situation during the time period the novel is set in which I believe is evidence as to just how much Bolaño manages to engage his readers with this narrative.

The controlled, seemingly lucid beginning seems to highlight the narrator’s confidence in controlling not only the pace of the story but how we as readers engage with the texts only to send us spiralling into a world where literature and its beauty that has constantly to be an outlet of some sort, often providing some sense of escapism, is complete juxtaposed against the brutal violence of the political conflict going on around it. What I thought was extremely intriguing (I really have got to find a better word for ‘interesting’ and ‘intriguing- the amount of times I have used them now!) is the way in which there is no sense of terror or emotional turbulence especially expressed throughout the novel although it is an almost certain thing our narrator must have experienced it to some degree given the amount of ongoing violence. She avoids paying too much attention to the unrest yet the brief windows she provides of it make it seem all the more real and tangible to the reader.

As she tries to outlast the violence and grows weak from hunger, the theme of memory and recollection grows stronger. The narrator recalls several memories from her past including her lost teeth and her friends as well as strange landscapes before ending on a vision of victims. There is a sense of falling into her own head and drifting, seemingly cut off from the reality that surrounds her before she jarringly brings us back to the present when she mentions the song of war and its meaning.

My question for this post would be whether we can consider the narrator’s telling of this story a way of her trying to escape what must have undoubtedly been a horrible reality? Or is it to ensure the way in which such terrible political unrest plagues people is not eventually forgotten and lost in time?