A Little Lumpen Novelita

Starred review from June 2, 2014
Reviewed by Gabe Habash
What is left to be said about Roberto Bolaño? And what could be said about A Little Lumpen Novelita, a slim novel that holds the distinction of being the final Bolaño book to be published in English? It’s understandable that the release of yet another of the author’s books might be met with eye rolls. But even though A Little Lumpen Novelita is not Bolaño’s best book, it’s still one of the best books of the year.
Slightly longer than a chapbook, A Little Lumpen Novelita feels as substantial as a book three times as long, because Bolaño keeps his scope small and frantically explores all the little crawl spaces of the story. There are two main settings: an apartment and a house, both in Rome. There are five characters, one of whom is the restless narrator, Bianca.
Bianca and her brother are orphans—“somehow that justified everything,” she says in the opening paragraph—and the death of their parents triggers an extended disillusioned period in her life. On the surface, the story has an aimless quality that reflects Bianca’s mind-set. The siblings pass their days without spending any money, trying to live off what’s left behind by their parents. They mainly watch TV. Bianca works at a salon and her brother works at a gym; one day, he brings home two men (“They weren’t his friends, though my brother chose to think they were”), known only as the Libyan and the Bolognan. The chief difference between the two seems to be that the Bolognan is good at answering questions from TV trivia shows. Bianca sleeps with them sometimes, but she leaves the lights off and can’t tell them apart. More days pass. Eventually, the four hatch a plan to rob an old, blind movie actor.
Though the plot is linear, the “secret story,” as the author liked to call it, bends and twists, refusing to be pinned down, and thus drives the reader to glorious distraction. This is the book’s real draw. A Little Lumpen Novelita bears Bolaño’s hallmarks: dread, detective work, and dreams (two standouts include one about an apologetic parrot that’s too heavy to fly and one in which the dead parents are worms dragging themselves across pavement). Underneath the plot, one senses, like Bianca, something lurking and waiting to reveal itself, a great truth of existence, an answer to a question she can’t ask or is not ready to ask yet. At one point, she fills out a trashy magazine quiz: “‘What’s a good age to die?’ Thirty-six, maybe. Before I turn forty.… ‘What kind of geological feature would you be?’ A deep-sea trench.… ‘Would you call yourself attractive?’ Yes. ‘Would you call yourself intelligent?’ No.” Easy answers are an illusion in this story, and either everything or nothing means something important.
If a reader places A Little Lumpen Novelita alongside the towering prose storms of The Savage Detectives and 2666, it will inevitably be blown away. But that’s not the way to look at it. Bolaño’s short novels and novellas distill his obsessions, but just like his longer works, they can drive you wild with a vague but definite sense that you’re onto something—and that if you keep searching, you’ll find out what it is.
This is a glittering gem, as maddening and haunting as you’d expect from Bolaño.
Gabe Habash is the deputy reviews editor of Publishers Weekly.

August 15, 2014
A modest fable, the final work by the Chilean master Bolano (1953-2003) published in his lifetime, encompassing sex, theft and doing what's necessary to get by. Bianca, the narrator of this short but philosophically prickly tale, tells us two things early on: first, that she used to live a life of crime; and second, that she was never a prostitute. What follows, though, complicates both assertions. When Bianca's parents died in a car wreck when she was a teenager, she and her brother were left to scrape together a living in Rome doing odd jobs. While working at a gym, her brother befriends two men who propose a scheme: Bianca will go to work for an aging, blind and wealthy former bodybuilder, effectively for sex, then case his mansion for a safe to crack. The two men have sex with Bianca as well while she's in the midst of her weekly assignations, but she deliberately avoids knowing which man has entered her room when. This kind of avoidance, Bolano suggests, is just part of the emotionally fuzzy atmosphere a young woman needs to create to survive a man's world; Bianca self-medicates with television and can't distinguish night and day. For Bolano, who's best known for epics like The Savage Detectives (1998) and 2666 (2008), this slim tale related in 16 brief chapters is relatively unambitious. But its watertight prose (via Wimmer's translation) and themes of criminality and the treatment of women make it of a piece with the writer's grander works. Bianca's narrative registers less as a mournful abuse confessional and more as a memoir of hard-won wisdom, about her acquiring the power to keep predatory men at arm's length. Did she truly commit a crime? Is what she did prostitution or not? Bolano leaves those questions provocatively open. A concise but welcome addition to a major writer's canon.

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August 1, 2014

Now married and the mother of a daughter, Bianca flashes back to her time as a recently orphaned teenager in Rome, when she and her brother, with only a minimal bequeathed pension, try to make ends meet by taking part-time jobs while still attending school. One day, the brother brings home two unsavory friends as nonpaying boarders. They persuade Bianca to serve the physical needs of an enigmatic character known as Maciste, a blind former matinee idol, who allegedly has a stash of money stored in a safe on his premises. Bianca tries to gain his confidence so he'll reveal the hiding place, but eventually, finding no evidence of a safe, she stops seeing Maciste, returns home, and throws the bums out. Really an expanded short story, this last published work during Bolano's lifetime has some of his typical trademarks: disfranchised ("lumpen") characters, sleazy surroundings, and an open ending. VERDICT In relation to other Bolano works (2666; The Savage Detectives), this novelette is definitely minor league. It will appeal to fans of the deceased author, of which there are many, but hardly convert any. As a side note, it was the inspiration for the 2013 Italian movie Il Futuro (The Future).--Lawrence Olszewski, North Central State Coll., Mansfield, OH

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2014
Every newly translated book by the late Bolao (2666, etc.) is a bona fide literary event, and this bewildering novellasadly, the last of his English translationsshould be celebrated as one of the Chilean maestro's best. Two teenagers in Rome are orphaned when their parents die in a car crash. Suddenly the night stopped existing and everything was constant sun and light, leaving Bianca and her brother unable to perceive darkness. They manage to scrape by, spending most of their time watching trivia shows and X-rated movies, until Bianca's brother gets fired from his job thanks to the influence of his suspicious new friends, a Libyan and a Bolognan, whom Bianca cannot tell apart. The four of them hatch a plan involving a washed-up, agoraphobic movie star who lives in a sprawling mansion without any lights. Collisions warp color or warp the way we see color, says Bianca's brother, foretelling the story's late revelations in the dark. The smooth, sparse translation by Wimmer (2666, The Savage Detectives) is stunning.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)