The English translation of Roberto Bolaño’s The Skating Rink came out last year and it is understandable why this was a later publication. The writing is not as developed as his later works and the political backdrop is not as pertinent as some of his other books, but this is still great writing and easily recommended. Maybe even more so as this is a more accessible work but still with the identifiable characteristics that can be attributed to Bolaño. The book could even be seen as a genre work of crime fiction or mystery, and is an example why a person could honestly believe Bolaño when he claimed that he had thought about becoming a murder detective, but the writing is artistically crafted so that the story morphs into something else entirely, qualities that are much more subtle and disturbing in their implications.

The Skating Rink is written as personal accounts of three different narrators, each with their own individual perspectives on the events of the story, and therefore each equally unreliable. At the intangible heart of the book is a beautiful Spanish ice skater named Nuria. She infatuates the timid heart of a manipulative government official, Enric Rosquelles, to such an extent that he builds her a private skating rink within an old tattered palace located just outside of Bolaño’s fictional town of “Z”. Nuria also captures the sexual interest of Remo Morán, a one time novelist but after residing in the rundown and culturally impoverished town of “Z”, a local business owner. He had a fair amount of startup cash. The third narrator, Remo Morán, is a drifting poet originally from Mexico City and who’s relation to Nuria is only peripheral, although slightly voyeuristic, as is his social role as an itinerant hand laborer.

While Nuria could be the metaphoric zenith for Bolaño’s tale, as an ethereal but powerful siren who calls together the male characters, a murder found upon the skating rink about two-thirds of the way through becomes the nadir, one that is all too real, tangible, entirely physical. And as this is a mystery book, identifying clues and foreshadowing images are there to implicate suspects. But the pieces do not all fit– jigsaw pieces with one slightly misaligned edge which draws attention to the other pieces around it. Or perhaps they all only fit too well. As in Bolaño’s 2666, the only definite that is provided is the dark cloud that hangs over the town of “Z” and the bodies that fall beneath it.