Review: 2666

2666 by Roberto Bolaño
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A semi-disjointed 5 part epic where the true connections between the parts aren't really fully clear until the final ~20 pages or so (out of 900).

The central subject that connects each of the parts in setting (perhaps less so the first and last parts at first glance) is the femicides of Santa Teresa, in turn inspired by the real-life femicides of Ciudad Juarez that took place during the 90's and 00's. The true meat of these incidents is not really addressed until the 4th part of this book, but until then you have to wade through 3 loosely connected sub-novels (themselves split across multiple narratives/viewpoints) that tend to digress and meander a lot on their own accord and are tonally distinct enough from each other that they each could've been their own novel as Bolano apparently intended before he died.

The prose isn't difficult to read compared to other similar-length long form works (I'm thinking Naked Singularity, Gravity's Rainbow, Infinite Jest, etc). It is however easy to lose focus when the digressions happen and without a clear or immediate sense of why they're happening. That said, there is an overall pessimistic, cynical theme of degeneration that could be seen as a constant here, with unresolved tension; relational connections missed; social and political incompetence; dream-like moments that seemingly amount to nothing in reality; and then of course the violence itself; although not all of it is hopeless especially towards the end.

The Part About the Crimes is particularly senseless in the way it clinically recounts each of the individual murders that takes place, describing the crime scenes and victim accounts in gruesome clinical detail. I think after the 10th or 15th murder I was already starting to feel desensitized (when you think about the reality that actually happened, how much more tragic it was), and then it just kept on going for another 200 pages of death. Such tonal whiplash compared to the first part with its almost mocking accounts of the hedonistic critics.

Almost every storyline in this book is never completely resolved within the plot itself -- thematically, perhaps yes, but not in actual climactic detail. It felt weird to end a 900 page journey feeling unsatisfied in that sense, even though in retrospect I can see why things are left the way they are (apart from the obvious fact that Bolano himself died before this was published; I have a feeling not much would've changed plot-wise even if he had survived). Given the subject matter and the fact that most of the real-life murders themselves were never actually solved, it makes sense.

I feel like I've already written a lot here while barely touching an inch of what 2666 actually covers or means; one could probably get lost reading up on the discourse over this book as much as the book itself (adding to my list of "books to read up on after reading"). There are so many ideas and thoughts here, almost to the point where it can feel like Bolano just decided to throw everything that was going on in his head at the kitchen sink and then some, debatably for better or worse.

Honestly, I feel like something as reductive as a "4-star" rating on goodreads is disingenuous here, because at the end of the day, ratings barely convey everything there is to unpack about a book like this (where I haven't even fully figured out how much of it I truly "liked" or "disliked"). I don't regret reading this book by any means, but I do find myself at a loss wondering how much of it I truly "enjoyed" given the subject matter. But perhaps that isn't the point of reading a work like this in the first place.