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The co-op bookstore for avid readers
The Skating Rink
Reader Score
73%
73% of readers
recommend this book
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.
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.
Book Details
- Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
- Publish Date: Aug 28th, 2009
- Pages: 208
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.00in - 5.60in - 0.70in - 0.80lb
- EAN: 9780811217132
- Categories: • Thrillers - Suspense• Political• Literary
About the Author
Andrews, Chris: - The poet and translator Chris Andrews has won the Valle Inclan Prize and the French-American Translation Prize for his work.
Bolaño, Roberto: - Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed "by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time" (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times)," and as "the real thing and the rarest" (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Rómulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.
Praise for this book
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
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 "San Francisco Chronicle"
A highly engaging novel of lyricism, menace and beauty.--James Yeh "The Faster Times"
One of the strangest mysteries...with its dark-summer heat that all but comes off the page.--Marilis Hornidge "The Lincoln County News"
Passion, mystery, seedy bars, and Bolaño's Olympian irony are here, as always.-- "The Village Voice"
...this Catalan drama sizzles with unrequited love and murderous ambition.--Emma Hagestadt "The Independent"
A stunning work of fiction. It is infused with a gritty poeticism and a unique worldview.--Don Sjoerdsma "Northwest Phoenix [Indiana University]"
A Book of the Year: The Skating Rink leavens the melancholy of exile with an interest in the uncanny and a knack for the surrealist image.--Siddhartha Deb "Times Literary Supplement"
The latest release in the series of highly masterful and literary translations by Chris Andrews.... Deserves to be read widely.--Rosemary Aud Franklin "World Literature Today"
Darkly funny, but also tender and complex in the tenor of classic Bolaño novels.--Savannah ("Savvy") Jones "SirReadaLot.org"
This short, exquisite novel is another unlikely masterpiece, as sui generis as all his books so far...Bolaño in The Skating Rink manages to honor genre conventions while simultaneously exploding them, creating a work of intense and unrealized longing.--Wyatt Mason "The New York Times Book Review"
The Skating Rink...like much of what [Bolaño] wrote, leaves many new novels looking pretty bland.--Anthony Cummins "The Observer"