Roberto Bolaño

A woman describes her hardscrabble life as an orphaned teenager on the streets of Rome, after dropping out of school and drifting into a bad crowd, in a novel from the acclaimed Chilean author of 2666.

A Little Lumpen Novelita

farah farooq

anurag kashyap this is right up your alley if you want to adapt it

Ashlyn

This was the first Bolaño work I've read and I was not disappointed. This short vignette meaningfully captures trauma, grief, morality, and transformation all in just over 100 pages. I will probably read this over again before I return it to the library.

"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. Orphaned overnight as a teenager--"our parents died in a car crash on their first vacation without us"--she drops out of school, gets a crappy job, and drifts into bad company. Her younger 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 how low she can fall. Electric, tense with foreboding, and written in jagged, propulsive chapters,A Little Lumpen Novelita delivers a surprising, fractured fable of seizing control of one's fate.

Donald

This is a good book to grab at the library (or buy in pb) because it is very, very short. I will read anything by Bolaño, and this has all the Bolañoisms you could possibly want in such a short work.

*emmie*

Gary Homewood

Modern-day existential noir, satisfyingly terse and original, like a grittier, slightly sleazy French New Wave film set in Rome.

A Little Lumpen Novelita

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