Though The Secret of Evil lacks narrative cohesion, fans of Bolaño (or the literary tradition his works are capitulating) will know that this shouldn’t be expected of him. Rather, the lack of cohesion belies a much more pervasive (or, as already mentioned, pernicious) unity: a unity of theme. The little worlds in these stories – narrations of movies never made, examinations of photographs never seen, tales of things that always never happen – are disjointed in particularity, but identical in their universality: that evil is a dastardly thing, and Bolaño makes it look easy.
Go to Anobium to read the rest of my review of Roberto Bolaño’s new book, The Secret of Evil.
