Synopsis
Now I am a mother and a married woman, but not long ago I led a life of crime': so Bianca begins her tale of growing up the hard way in Rome in A Little Lumpen Novelita.
Orphaned overnight as a teenager - 'our parents died in a car crash on their first vacation without us' - she drops out of school, gets a crappy job, sees a terrible brightness at night, and drifts into bad company. Her little brother brings home two petty criminals who need a place to stay. As the four of them share the family apartment and plot a strange crime, Bianca learns she can drift lower . . .
Electric and tense with foreboding, with its jagged, propulsive short chapters beautifully translated by Natasha Wimmer, A Little Lumpen Novelita - one of the last novels Roberto Bolaño published - delivers a surprising, fractured fairy tale of taking control of one's fate.
Details
Reviews
“As for Bolaño, what can one say? One of our greatest writers, a straight colossus”Junot Díaz
“One of the best books of the year - A Little Lumpen Novelita feels as substantial as a book three times as long . . . This is a glittering gem, as maddening and haunting as you'd expect from Bolaño”Gabe Habash, Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“A Little Lumpen Novelita, while short, is among Bolano's most intoxicating works. Obsessive and ambiguous, its open-ended nature is reflective not only of the protagonist but of the author himself. And it further cements him as a master of the form, of any form”Juan Vidal, NPR
“A Little Lumpen Novelita may be Bolano's best trick, and greatest gift, ever”Gawker, Gawker
