To be honest I'm still digesting - this is a huge, massive, sprawling book in five mostly-disparate parts. It's hard to track something this large and I sometimes found myself frustrated, lost in the weeds and unsure how I felt about what I was reading.
Now that I've finished it and can see the shape of the entire thing, I think it's brilliant and a fitting capper for Bolaño's career. I'm still digesting and will be for a while, but it's so clearly the work of a dying man who knew he didn't have much time left. In many ways it's 900 pages of Bolaño grappling with his own mortality, his ever-bleakening view of and relationship with the world around him, his legacy as an author and the relationship between art and artist. It's the terminus of a life and body of work preoccupied with art and violence and exile and the lasting wounds of 20th century fascism and political violence.
The last 3 pages in particular hit me like a gut punch. Like "I Can't Give Everything Away", the final track off Bowie's Blackstar, it feels like a final goodbye, the last words of an artist I love as he signs off one final time. RIP Roberto, you are greatly missed ❤️