The story of an author who is exiled from his native Peru and finds refuge in Spain and his writing and who loses his life to a disease shortly after his work finally gets acknowledges by his peers and the public.

He always believed himself to be a poet - despite writing novels as well, he was a poet. He helped create a minor poetic movement in Mexico and tried to keep it alive even when he moved to Catalonia, he refused to sell himself to the magazines and publishers and change how he was writing, even when he had to be supported by his wife. The story has two parts - the first is the almost linear story as told by another author in Spain and the poet's wife; the second one is seemingly told by the ghost of our main character. Both parts thread both through the present and the past - building an image of a creator who does not really care if people like him (or his work). Until they do - and then, when he finally embraces the world, when he finally gets the family he always wanted and the fame which always eluded him, Fate decides that it is time for the final curtain.

If that outline sounds familiar, replace Peru with Chile and it may get what you have at the back of your mind closer. If it still does not click, check a short biography of Roberto Bolaño (even Wikipedia will be enough to show you what you need). Javier Serena's poet is a thinly disguised version of the Chilean author - and once that clicks, you can see even more in this very short novel - things unsaid, things just hinted at suddenly have a real life connection and mean more. But even if you never connect the dots, even if you take the novel just as an invention of the author, it still works - because the shadow (and ghost) of Bolaño just add to a story that is already there, fully formed and independent.

Highly recommended. ( )

The Last Word by Javier Serena

In the absence of new works written by Roberto Bolano we now have a new novel, The Last Word, whose main character is a fictionalized stand-in for the late author. Javier Serena has written a book about a writer, Ricardo Funes, whose life story follows similar paths.

The first two sections are narrated by Fernando Valles, a writer, professor and friend, and then Funes’ wife Guadalupe.

Starting out as a rebellious petty criminal and anti-establishment poet in Mexico City, Ricardo Funes, finds his way to Spain where he becomes an iterant peddler and, meeting a woman, steals her away with visions of adventure. Guadalupe is presented as a dutiful wife who supports Funes’ years of unpublished writing. He is depicted as a house husband, interested in WWII models, boating, swimming, and guiding their son in the ways of the world.

Hanging out at a local café with occasional forays to 2nd hand bookstores in Barcelona, Funes, keeps writing. When he is diagnosed with a terminal illness his writing takes on a fevered pitch and in 20 days of sleepless manic writing he produces a book called The Aztec which becomes an international bestseller. This is followed up with a 2nd novel, El Trafico.

“He worked as if touched by some mystical annunciation, though he was merely driven by his disease, conscious that he could no longer squander a single second of his life on another failed paragraph. Everything flowed, every possible meaning of every sentence blooming in the cracks of the page, as if he cut his arm with a knife and stories sprung from his veins with all the authenticity and truth of an ancient, secret stream, no longer willed to the surface by desire but erupting with force of necessity…”

“…he had somehow managed to elevate himself into brilliance and lucidity, he had done so by first peering into the darkest of depths, the abysses that so transfix those prone to suicide.”

Established now as a literary superstar he spends his last years attending lectures, book signings and prize events. He ponders his lost years comparing himself to others who made things with their hands, contributed to their communities, and questions the very essence of writing as a lifelong endeavor.

The last section is written in Funes’ own voice and in the last scene he and Fernando attend a literary conference. Here he becomes more philosophical and self-reflective still questioning whether he had lived his life as best he could.

“My lungs were as full of fluid as a ship about to sink.” Asked a simple question by a young attractive woman, “what would you tell someone who wanted to write?”

“Just one thing. Please don’t write. Not a single word.” These the last words he uttered in public, as he felt tired and doomed.

In the end this is a book that can be enjoyed by both fans of Bolano and those interested in the life of a writer. Serena has paid homage to whom he believed Bolano was: a real talent whose life events served as the impetus for the stories and books that followed. ( )

Last Words on Earth by Javier Serena (translated beautifully by Katie Whittemore) is a short but powerful novel that, while tipping the hat to Bolano, uses his life as a frame within which to examine life, writing, and the areas where they meet.

Told from three distinct perspectives, the novel offers the reader, first, the view we usually get of such a figure. Told through the voice of a friend yet also through the lens of the literary world making a writer's life seem like an inevitable arc, even when that inevitability is long delayed. We see the fictional writer, Funes, as an almost heroic intellectual. This story is told with an eye toward what will come, namely fame and fortune.

When we hear from Funes' wife, Guadalupe, we get a better picture of the man rather than the writer. There is both love and frustration in her version, she believed in him but also often grew tired of the drudgery. We see a different perspective on his idealistic need to write, no less impressive but more human than heroic.

Finally we hear from the writer himself. He is far more human, and at times maybe a little less likable, than either of the other two versions. What we also see is that even our legends, our idealistic heroes, are more like the rest of us than we realize. The concerns are not always, or at least not always entirely, idealistic. There is a selfishness, the selfishness we all know from our own experiences. There is a doubting that we also are familiar with. And there is the need to make the most of a good thing when it finally happens. Again, something we recognize.

In addition to the personal story, the story of a man who is both legend and all too human, there is the question of what makes something, in this case works of literature, worthless one moment and invaluable the next. How much is subjective and how much is objective? And can we ever really answer that question?

I would recommend this to readers who enjoy reading about (in a roundabout way) famous writers and those readers who like character studies that offer different, not necessarily conflicting, viewpoints. I actually rated this a bit higher than I was initially going to because it did something I value in a book, it kept revisiting me in the days after I finished it. When a book stays with me I know that it was, for me, more than just a story to read, it is a collection of ideas to consider.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher. ( )