The Skating Rink

Roberto Bolaño

Translated by Chris Andrews
03 June 2011
9780330510530
192 pages

Synopsis

When Nuria Martí, the beautiful Spanish figure skater, is suddenly dropped from the Olympic team, a besotted admirer builds a secret ice rink for her in the ruins of an old mansion on the outskirts of their seaside town. What he doesn’t tell her is that he paid for it using embezzled public funds. Such deceit is not without repercussions, and the skating rink soon becomes a crime scene . . .

Rife with political corruption, sex, jealousy and frustrated passion, Roberto Bolaño's The Skating Rink – narrated in turn by a corrupt and pompous civil servant, a beleaguered romantic poet, and a duplicitous local entrepreneur – is a darkly atmospheric tale of murder and its motives.

Gripping, easy to read, sometimes funny and extraordinarily romantic . . . High praise.
This magnificent murder mystery . . . is wrought with voices of great urgency and yet penned with a delectable lightness of touch.
Elegant, elusive and amusing, this novel is more than capable of standing alongside the rest of Bolaño’s work.