For
a novel that begins with ". . .not long ago I led a life of crime.",
this is banal. Of course, that's what Bolaño traffics in.
The treatment of sex in A Little Lumpen Novelita is a sharp contrast between how it's treated in Jim Harrison's The Big Seven.
Our narrator here treats sex almost as something that just happens,
even if she initiates it. It's not an all consuming drive, or a constant
thought. If there are details, they're clinical, as opposed to
gratuitous.
Bolaño's work is both realistic and
dreamlike for me because there isn't necessarily a clean break or a
turning point -- things just kind of peter out. The randomness gives the
work a verisimilitude that more classically delineated novels lack.
That
said, there's just not a lot here. Maybe that's something I should have
expected, given the title. Not that it's bad by any means -- it just
feels a little misshapen and abrupt.
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