Monsieur Pain - Criticism

Criticism

In a 2010 review for the New York Times Will Blythe states:

The beauty of Roberto Bolaño’s slender mystery novel Monsieur Pain, originally published in 1999 and now translated from the Spanish by the estimable Chris Andrews, is that it doesn’t behave much like a mystery novel. By the end of the book, which Bolaño wrote in either 1981 or 1982, the mysteries remain unsolved, the ostensible victim may or may not have suffered from foul play and the protagonist intent on figuring out who done it (if anyone did anything at all) appears incapable of doing so.

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