Hi friends, happy Monday! I hope you’re all doing well! Today I’m posting my review of Robert Bolaño’s short story collection, Cowboy Graves.

This was translated from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer.

Cowboy Graves by: Roberto Bolaño: This was a collection of three short stories that told very different tales, yet came together in a nice way. Each story had its own tale to tell, and each had its own political tie to it, which made them extremely interesting to read. Then, layered with the fantastical writing that Bolaño uses to write with and you’ve got really captivating stories. Some were more memorable than others, but overall they were all written really well. This reader didn’t exactly connect with these stories, but that’s okay because they could still appreciate what the author was trying to say, plus this had beautiful writing, so it wasn’t a bad reading experience. This reader isn’t into magical realism, and these short stories felt like they touched upon that genre a bit, so that took the reader out of the plots somewhat, but that’s a personal critic and not one of the author or his writing. It was really well done and the stories were so short it almost felt like we needed more. The pacing was great and the characters were pretty good, too. It felt like we didn’t get too deep of a dive on them, but from the length of the them, that worked well because there wasn’t enough time to truly get to know any of the characters; we were in and out, just enough time to get the gist of things before it was over. In the end, this was a well put together set of novellas, that the reader wished they had loved more, but they still enjoyed.