It's noir. It's a thriller. It's a book that felt like I had hazy and clouded vision going through it. After all, there is the main character of Monsieur Pierre Pain. And apparently he needs to cure someone, Monsieur Vallejo, of hiccups. Yet there are also shady characters that don't want him to do so, to the point that they even bribe him not to cure Monsieur Vallejo of the hiccups. It's just so weird. And in the end, all the characters somehow vanish in a way that it felt like they didn't even exist.
And one hundred and thirty something pages later, it is all over. As I said, it's typical Bolaño. It's as if turning a page of this book is going through a rabbit hole that you don't know where it would lead to.
I like how Bolaño plays with perspectives. I remember reading once another book of his where the same narrative was told three times, from the perspective of the three individuals who were all involved in the story. And in the current book, there's just one perspective, that of Monsieur Pain, but it is very unreliable, and the reader is essentially left hostage to the various hazy perceptions that the main character experiences. Who knows, maybe all of this was just a hallucination and nothing really happened in real life?
In any case, I think I enjoyed it. It's perhaps not the most wow-inducing book by Bolaño, but if you have enjoyed his other writings, then this is an enjoyable tome for you too. I give it 3 out of 5 stars.
See my other book reviews here.
