The Skating Rink - Hardcover

Bolaño, Roberto; Andrews, Chris

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0811217132 ISBN 13: 9780811217132

Publisher: New Directions, 2009

Synopsis

A complex book, The Skating Rink's short chapters are skillfully broken off with questions to maintain the narrative tension: Who was murdered? Who was the murderer? Will the murderer be caught? All of these questions are answered, and yet The Skating Rink is not fundamentally a crime novel, or not exclusively; it's also about political corruption, sex, the experience of immigration, and frustrated passion. And it's an atmospheric chronicle of one summer season in a seaside town, with its vacationers, its drifters, its businessmen, bureaucrats and social workers.

About this title

Review:

A highly engaging novel of lyricism, menace and beauty.--James Yeh

One of the strangest mysteries...with its dark-summer heat that all but comes off the page.--Marilis Hornidge

A stunning work of fiction. It is infused with a gritty poeticism and a unique worldview.--Don Sjoerdsma

...this Catalan drama sizzles with unrequited love and murderous ambition.--Emma Hagestadt

The latest release in the series of highly masterful and literary translations by Chris Andrews.... Deserves to be read widely.--Rosemary Aud Franklin

Lucid fury . . . is a pretty good description of Bolaño's aesthetic. He is a novelist of voraciousness without sentiment, hardness to a fever pitch.--Todd Shy

Darkly funny, but also tender and complex in the tenor of classic Bolaño novels.--Savannah ("Savvy") Jones

Passion, mystery, seedy bars, and Bolaño's Olympian irony are here, as always.

When I read Bolaño, I think: everything is possible again....How he makes one laugh! The laughter of someone who just escaped being buried live, and suddenly remembers how badly she wants to live.--Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love

The Skating Rink...like much of what [Bolano] wrote, leaves many new novels looking pretty bland.--Anthony Cummins

Book Description:

A spellbinding, sui generis detective fiction focusing on the swirling vortex of sex, death, and intrigue surrounding a beautiful Spanish figure skating champion.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0811217132
• ISBN 13: 9780811217132
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208