Soon enough it is revealed that there has been a murder, and the second two thirds of the novel advance based on the series of events leading up to and just after the crime, but to call The Skating Rink a murder mystery, or even a play on the detective novel, would be a drastic mistake.  Although Bolaño has displayed an affection for the genre elsewhere, he is not particularly interested in the language of forensics here.  And neither, for the most part, are the narrators.  They receive the news of the murder with a sense of inevitability, as if each of them sensed it coming in their bones, and as though it is their solemn duty to weather the consequences.  Each of them is so overcome with desire for the spectral, figurative women they pursue, that the murder is just another obstacle to be endured on their impossible pilgrimage to the altar of their fantasies.  Because the book is, ultimately, about the frustrating caprices of desire and what it drives men (specifically men – the women in The Skating Rink are merely targets for the narrators’ fascination) to do.

The titular rink is an elaborately wrought centerpiece toward which all three narrators are drawn over the course of the novel, like shipwrecked sailors caught in a whirlpool.  The dark, frost-encrusted corridors, like chambers of a frozen heart, are rendered with a fanatical grace that shows Bolaño working at top form.  Other memorable sequences, like a breathtaking, tightly orchestrated set piece involving a hang-gliding competition on the beach, will not disappoint.  But Bolaño’s lyrical excesses are a constant distraction, and they compromise the integrity of what is otherwise a strong and focused work.  Take the following passage, for example, which is a description of the night air, spoken by Remo Morán.  Granted, Morán is a novelist, and not a particularly good one, by all accounts, but it’s nearly impossible to tell whether Bolaño wants us to laugh at or take seriously the following:

“The air was so dense that when I raised my arm I felt as if I was plunging it into a living, semi-solid mass, as if it was bound in hundreds of damp leather bracelets charged with electricity.  Raising both arms, like a signaler on an aircraft carrier, felt like anally and vaginally penetrating some atmospheric hallucination or extraterrestrial creature.”

Maybe I’m just not the intended audience for this description, as I have (full disclosure) never anally and vaginally penetrated either an atmospheric hallucination or an extraterrestrial creature.  But fuck if I have the slightest clue what Bolaño is talking about here.  These erratic digressions pervade all three monologues (although Bolaño seems most on-target when writing the character of Rosquelles, an anxious, tubby mess of a bureaucrat who he renders with an impressive dignity) and because there doesn’t seem to be any pattern behind these moments of excess, I’m tempted to think of Bolaño feverishly churning out a first draft that went straight to print, warts and all.  I can’t help feeling, while reading his work, that Bolaño is often a victim to his own exuberance.  The fire he sets on his words can quickly spread out of control, and he does little, if anything, to rein it in.  The slips and random riffs are arguably more easily absorbed in the massive sprawl of Bolaño’s later work, but in a focused exercise like The Skating Rink, they stick out like the mysterious woman who runs through the streets of Z with a knife tucked in her belt.  Fans of Bolaño will find much in this book to relish, despite its flaws.  But those readers looking for a more satisfying introduction to his work might want to start with By Night in Chile or the taut novella A Distant Star.

From the Fanzine archives: Andy Beta's review of Bolano's 2666.