This book was a slog at times, but it's a marvelous and engaging read if you're excited about your own madness and depression.

Bolaño himself seems mad, weaving stories that are connected to one another by confusion, fear, frustration and sexual violence.

It's a "macho" book—the reader is invited to celebrate men's sexual violence and capacity for masochism (embodied in the form of a redeemed banality of Naziism), but an immense catalog of brutal rapes and murders also numbs you to the supposed thrills. (and kept me, at least, up at night)

Literary, highly-academic (though I reckon also enjoyable by non-academics), and powerful.

Recommended for Latin Americanists, Comp Lit majors, Sadomasochists, Historians and whodunit fans.