The Skating Rink
Roberto Bolaño
(Author)
Chris Andrews
(Translator)
Description
Set in the seaside town of Z, on the Costa Brava, north of Barcelona, The Skating Rink oscillates between two poles: a camp ground and a ruined mansion, the Palacio Benvingut. The story, told by three male narrators, revolves around a beautiful figure skating champion, Nuria Martí. When she is suddenly dropped from the Olympic team, a pompous but besotted civil servant secretly builds a skating rink in the ruined Palacio Benvingut, using public funds. But Nuria has affairs, provokes jealousy, and the skating rink becomes a crime scene. A mysterious pair of women, an ex-opera singer and a taciturn girl often armed with a knife, turn up as well.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.
Product Details
Price
$21.95
$20.41
Publisher
New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publish Date
August 28, 2009
Pages
182
Dimensions
5.6 X 0.7 X 8.0 inches | 0.8 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9780811217132
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
Roberto Bolaño was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1953. He grew up in Chile and Mexico City, where he was a founder of the Infrarealist poetry movement. His first full-length novel, The Savage Detectives, received the Herralde Prize and the Rómulo Gallegos Prize when it appeared in 1998. Roberto Bolaño died in Blanes, Spain, at the age of fifty.
The poet and translator Chris Andrews has won the Valle Inclan Prize and the French-American Translation Prize for his work.
Reviews
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
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
