2666
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2666
Narrated by:
John Lee, Armando Duran, Scott Brick, Grover Gardner, G. Valmont Thomas
Buy Now for £16.99
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Narrated by:
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John Lee
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Armando Duran
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Scott Brick
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Grover Gardner
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G. Valmont Thomas
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By:
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Roberto Bolaño
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
Santa Teresa, on the Mexico-US border: an urban sprawl that draws lost souls to it like a vortex.
Convicts and academics find themselves here, as does an American sportswriter, a teenage student with her widowed father, and a reclusive, 'missing' author. But, there is a darker side to the town. Girls and women are disappearing at an alarming rate.
As a sense of conspiracy grows and an apocalyptic shadow draws closer, the corruption, violence and decadence of twentieth-century history reveals itself in a novel of an astonishing scale and burning intensity.
TRANSLATED BY NATASHA WIMMER
‘A landmark in what’s possible for the novel. Bolaño has proven it can do anything’ New York Times
‘Wondrous... Unforgettable...will resonate for years to come’ Daily Telegraph
‘As riveting as any top-notch thriller... 2666 achieves something extremely rare in fiction: it provides an all-encompassing view of our world’ Sunday Times
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Part 1 mainly concerns the German author but can also be seen as a love story between a woman and three men and which of the three men she eventually chooses. The 4 characters are academics who become obsessed with the German author, Archimboldi, whose reputation builds from obscurity to being considered for the Nobel. As they pursue their academic careers they learn details about Archimboldi‘s life which eventually results in a clue about his current whereabouts which turns out to be Santa Theresa. This section is beautifully written with lots of post-modern touches like references to texts and narrators referring to other narrators and so on but it never feels contrived and is often cited as the most enjoyable part of the novel.
Parts 2 and 3 are less interesting and shorter and mostly serve to set up the next section which is about the murdered women in Santa Teresa. I still enjoyed these parts particularly the life of an itinerant woman and there are some crucial bits of information about the main plot.
Part 4 is probably where 2666 gets its reputation from and it consists of a portrait of the city as a dysfunctional jumble of cops, journalists, civil authorities, narcotics, politicians, celebrities and murders particularly murders of women and particularly young women. The murders continue relentlessly throughout and are presented in forensically objective detail. The effect on the reader is wanting the murders to stop so you don’t have to hear about another one and wanting the city to get its act together and find the killer but we are never given closure as you would in a normal crime novel. That is of course the point, the murders are endemic and the cause, if that is the right word, is corruption, misogyny and economic exploitation.
Part 5 is a biography of Archimboldi and deals with fairly familiar themes of German experience in the 20th century namely fighting in world war 2, the holocaust and post war reconstruction. However the post modern style using found texts and different narrators really brings a different view of the events and it is an extremely skilful and effective piece of writing.
2666 uses all kinds of different writing styles, dream sequences, unexpected violence and use of asides. The effect is disorienting but thrilling and while challenging it remains fundamentally an act of story telling and a critique of modern societies. I can say hand on heart 2666 is a good read in a way that, Ulysses, say, definitely isn‘t. The narration is excellent with each of the 5 parts tackled by a different reader. The most challenging 4th part is handled particularly well with the harrowing details of how the women died delivered with dispassionate clarity and a hint of sadness.
Post modern masterpiece: addictive, fascinating
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