Book Review: Monsieur Pain by Roberto Bolaño (translated from Spanish into German by Heinrich von Berenberg)

 

It is a very long time since I´ve read something by Roberto Bolaño. Last time was many many years ago, when my mother of blessed memory introduced me to some translations into French. However, I was not familier with the second of his novels La senda de los elefantos (The Path of the Elephants) - translated from Spanish into German as Monsieur Pain by Henrich von Berenberg. The novel was written in 1981 or 1982 and as in the case of other novels by Bolaño it was not very known until lately, through a game of various circumstances. 

The novel has less than 200 pages and it is an alert allegorical story with a detective plot, which does uses real characters - like the Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo - and locations - Paris - to create an intricated story whose end may continue far beyond the end of the book. The story evolves erratically, with one encounter leading to another, forcing the events to evolve in a certain direction, out of the writer´s control, but fully free in the world of imagination.

In 1938 Paris, the mesmerist Pierre Pain is requested to figure out and eventually cure an unidentified illness of Vallejo who, among others, is hiccuping without pause. His efforts are jeopardized by various characters appearing in the story from nowhere and going to nowhere, like two Spaniards. Doctors and nurses do not allow him to practice his gift. All the time, Pain is randomly meeting people whose meaning into his life he cannot grasp. The events he is experiencing are equally confusing him. 

I personally enjoyed being back to this kind of magical writing - less Harry Potter kind of magic, rather the Latin American tradition of magic - and the innovation of the prose. However, felt frustrated that the story ends too fast and it does not maginify more the many random details of the story. I wished for my reading pleasure a more expansive complex story. But once back to Bolaño, I am definitely interested in getting to know more of his works, maybe all that was published until now, hopefully one day in the original Spanish language as well.

Rating: 3 stars