A Little Lumpen Novelita

By: Roberto Bolaño, Natasha Wimmer

Narrated by: Gabra Zackman

"Now I am a mother and a married woman, but not long ago I led a life of crime." So Bianca begins her tale of growing up the hard way in Rome in A Little Lumpen Novelita.

Orphaned overnight as a teenager - "our parents died in a car crash on their first vacation without us" - she drops out of school and gets a crappy job. At night, she is plagued by a terrible brightness, and soon she drifts into bad company. Her little brother brings home two petty criminals who need a place to stay. As the four of them share the family apartment and plot a strange crime, Bianca learns she can fall even lower.

Electric and tense with foreboding, with its jagged, propulsive short chapters beautifully translated by Natasha Wimmer, A Little Lumpen Novelita - one of the last novels Roberto Bolaño published - delivers a surprising, fractured fairy tale of taking control of one's fate.

©2018 Roberto Bolaño (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Good Characterizations. Dull story.

I read this Novelita since a friend has raved about Bolaño’s work. Others of his books have been unrewarding, but this one was so short, I thought I’d give him one more chance. No Joy.

Bolaño has created what could have been an interesting scenario peopled by a well developed leading woman. He fails, though, to create any empathy between her and the reader. We listen to her tale but can’t bring ourselves to care what happens to her.

It’s a very brief work, so our boredom is soon relieved. Three stars. The Narration was well done.

So boring story stupid no point

Included in my audible plus and impressed with by night, I decided to give this a listen. Great character in Bianca, cheeky psychoanalytic storytelling, latent ironies. Worth a listen and relisten, a read and reread, what have you. This left me empty—though I’m not one for theory, I knew what this work set out to illuminate from the title alone and delivered it did.