The legendary Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño's last published work before his death in 2003 was a 70-page novella told by a 19-year-old orphaned girl in Rome; this New Directions edition is the first English-language translation. Young Bianca immediately tells us that she is now a married mother, but has led a life of crime. Forced to seek employment after her parents are killed in a car accident, she disdains prostitution and instead gets a job at a hair salon. Her only brother secures a position at a gym, and begins pumping up his muscles and watching porn videos to learn how to make love.
One day, he brings home two friends, known only as the Bolognan and the Libyan, who arrive without a single personal item, move into the dead parents' bedroom and have a predilection for constant cleaning. Despite the casual narration, Bianca's story is often startling: "[O]ne of them came into the room and made love to me. I think it was the Bolognan."
Dispossessed, uprooted from their economic and social class, the brother and sister spend a lot of time watching videos and television. When the boys come up with a scheme to make money, Bianca begins sleeping with Maciste, the only other named character in the novelita. He's a big, fat, blind man ("like a broken refrigerator"), a former film star whom everyone calls Mr. Universe because he won the title twice in the '60s. He now has a huge private gym and supposedly a safe full of valuables, which her brother's friends are determined to rob, if only Bianca can find it.
Bianca developed strangely good nocturnal vision after her parents' violent death, but her memory is problematic. She forgets the other characters' names. She's uncertain about what really happened. She is warned never to ask Maciste about his blindness, which she promptly does, while the Bolognan and the Libyan watch "thousands of hours of television" patiently waiting to rob him.
It's fair to say that Bolaño's last novella is an exercise in ambiguity. Is there anything worth stealing in Maciste's huge house? Will Bianca's proclaimed marriage ever occur in the story? Will readers get to witness her supposed life of crime? A Little Lumpen Novelita is slight without being fragile, haunting, unpredictable, packed with setups that lack payoffs and perfectly content to wander along at its own pace without proving anything--a last rule-breaking tale from one of modern Latin American literature's original voices. --Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle, Wash.
Shelf Talker: Translated into English for the first time, this short novella about an orphaned 19-year-old girl in Rome was Chilean superstar Roberto Bolaño's last published work.