Selections from One-Star Amazon Reviews of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666

[Editorial note: Today is Roberto Bolaño’s birthday–he would’ve turned 62. The following citations come from one-star Amazon reviews of his masterpiece 2666. To be clear, I am a huge fan of 2666—I’ve written about it extensively on this site. But I never posted a review on Amazon. More one-star Amazon reviews.].

***

Awful.

Boring!

Nothing.

No Point.

No Story.

No characters.

This is not a story.

Felt it was too dark.

endless culs-de-sac

There is no premise

Numbing dumbness.

As a Literature major,

incoherent and rambling

Disconnected and tedious.

The joke is on me, I guess.

written in a type of journalese

this novel (if it can be called that)

an obtuse novel with no real point.

I would rather stick forks in my eyes

stilted, awkward, and difficult to read

I would prefer to be boiled alive in oil.

900 pages of words that mean nothing.

multiple pages are spent describing dreams

delivers little if any enjoyment to the reader.

900 pages of distinctly non-literary masochism

I hated the spewing of authors I’d never heard of.

The writing or words are geared towards intellectuals.

Imagine this: you’re dreaming a dream that never ends.

it’s one of those pretentious books for pretentious people

a sprawling, formless, utterly pretentious bloated drudge

bloated streams of consciousness which negate themselves

no subtle meassage that is worthy of discussion or thought

I can see how this might have been written by a very ill man.

boring, repetitive, pointless, misogynistic, indulgent blather

I’ve never experienced a book which was so devoid of reward.

little or no substance in terms of an overall message or theme

a pointless study of odd obsessions and the meaningless of life

On xx date, the body of xxx was found, mutilated in the dumps.

I spent most of my time looking up defintions to 100’s of words.

this book is a GRUESOME and HORRIFICALLY VIOLENT book.

Bolano could not care less what the general public thinks of his book

has little of note to say about the meaning of life or the human condition

I am hard pressed to believe that the other reviewers even read this book.

The largest section of the book is basically 300+ pages of autopsy reports.

You will read the words “vaginally and anally raped” over and over and over

This book would make a great table leg, coaster, or booster seat for a small child.

unending detached accounts and descriptions of hundreds of murders of women

I find myself stupefied by the critical circle-jerk which has fomented around 2666

I felt like I was back in college and had a homework assignment to read this book.

Of the 3 pillars of a novel, characters, plot, and language, it succeeds at none of them.

I understand that fans of this book are very passionate about it and want to defend “2666.”

I don’ know what I expected but the first 30 pages (as far as I got) seems like a history lesson.

multiple interpretations of the dreams of distant relatives of unimportant side-side characters.

What sick psychopath would enjoy this kind of never ending and super boring accounts of murdered women??

If you like your literary masterpieces to resemble journalism tinged with a rather daft magical realism, then perhaps Bolano shall enthrall you

Academics and illuminati who are in raptures about this book please forgive a humble autodidact for being nonplussed by the spectacular and ongoing brouhaha

a collection of many little stories, each a page, or two, or five, that start to develop, then go nowhere, surrounding 200 pages of monotonous descriptions of hundreds of murdered girls.