The Skating Rink - Roberto Bolaño

The Skating Rink by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Chris Andrews / 192-page paperback from New Directions / ISBN 9780811218689

***

A phenomenally unusual three-way murder mystery.

With a murder at its heart, Roberto Bolano’s The Skating Rink is, among other things, a crime novel. Murder seems to have exerted a fascination for the endlessly talented Bolano, who in his last interview, according to The Observer, “declared, in all apparent seriousness, that what he would most like to have been was a homicide detective.”

Set in the seaside town of Z, north of Barcelona, The Skating Rink is told in short, suspenseful chapters by three male narrators, and revolves around a beautiful figure skating champion, Nuria Martí. A ruined mansion, knife-wielding women, political corruption, sex, and jealousy all appear in this atmospheric chronicle of a single summer season in a seaside town, with its vacationers, businessmen, immigrants, bureaucrats, social workers, and drifters.

"Exquisite . . . another unlikely masterpiece, as sui generis as all his books so far. The Skating Rink manages to honor genre conventions while simultaneously exploding them, creating a work of intense and unrealized longing. --Wyatt Mason"