The Skating Rink (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780811217132)

Set in the seaside town of Z, on the Costa Brava, north of Barcelona, The Skating Rink oscillates between two poles: a camp ground and a ruined mansion, the Palacio Benvingut. The story, told by three male narrators, revolves around a beautiful figure skating champion, Nuria Martí. When she is suddenly dropped from the Olympic team, a pompous but besotted civil servant secretly builds a skating rink in the ruined Palacio Benvingut, using public funds. But Nuria has affairs, provokes jealousy, and the skating rink becomes a crime scene. A mysterious pair of women, an ex-opera singer and a taciturn girl often armed with a knife, turn up as well.

A complex book, The Skating Rink's short chapters are skillfully broken off with questions to maintain the narrative tension: Who was murdered? Who was the murderer? Will the murderer be caught? All of these questions are answered, and yet The Skating Rink is not fundamentally a crime novel, or not exclusively; it's also about political corruption, sex, the experience of immigration, and frustrated passion. And it's an atmospheric chronicle of one summer season in a seaside town, with its vacationers, its drifters, its businessmen, bureaucrats and social workers.

Author: Roberto Bolaño
ISBN-10: 0811217132
ISBN-13: 9780811217132
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Language: English
Published: 08/28/2009
Pages: 208
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.60w x 0.70d

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 08/01/2009 pg. 34
New York Times Book Review 08/30/2009 pg. 8
Multicultural Review 05/01/2010 pg. 43