2666

True story, I swear: I'm sitting on the metro, reading 2666 when a man walks up to me and says:

"You shouldn't read that."

"...Pardon me?"

"That." He points at the book, whose cover is a Bosch-like scene of what looks like angels and demons shrouded in red and black and 666 in large red numbers. "It's not good for you. Do you know what that means? The end of the world. Jesus loves you, do you know that?"

And I get what he's about and try to explain that it's a misunderstanding. Not only don't I believe in any of that, but the title of the book is 2666 and might be catholic but not in any way supernatural or religious, and it's a... um... post-postmodern deconstruction of... er... the violence inherent in the structures of... The man isn't impressed by my explanation and keeps trying to convince me to get rid of the book and turn to Christ, for we live in the end of days and he's only telling me this because he's my brother and he loves me, etc. That's an awful lot of fuss over a book, I think as I step off the train and note that I'm on page 166 out of 898.

So we've established what 2666 is not; not about the Antichrist, the apocalypse, check. And now, long after my Christian brother has left, I'm here trying to explain what it is about, what all the fuss is about, and why I spent every free moment of a couple of weeks with my nose buried in a huge Chilean novel I both loved and hated.

Let's see, there's a secretive German writer who barely sells any books. There's a group of literature critics who claim he's the greatest writer of the 20th century (well, except for Kafka) and are prepared to beat up anyone who disagrees. There's an industrial city in northern Mexico which is probably home to at least one serial killer, since women keep turning up dead - much to the annoyance of the local police force. You've got a black journalist who happens to investigate the murders when all he really wants to do is interview the forgotten heroes of the civil rights movement. Plus hundreds of other characters who walk in and out of the story - or are carried in and out, since many of them only show up after their death.

So what is 2666? I can namedrop until the cows come home to the slaughterhouse; a The Name Of The Rose in the way it not only references Borges and Calvino but also uses a murder mystery to illuminate the century-old structures of our culture; a far more ambitious The Secret History in its tackling of society's pressure and misguided idealism; a The Pledge in the way it picks apart the crime novel and refuses to put it back together since it doesn't work; A Hundred Years of Solitude, American Psycho, A Void, Gravity's Rainbow, Moby-Dick... I could keep this up all day and not come any closer. It's at once a fascinating hodgepodge of influences and one of the most unique, coherent novels I've read recently, which is all the more remarkable since on a surface level the damn thing doesn't fit together at all. It's five separate books covering five (mostly) different sets of characters in five (mostly) different timelines, each one slowly and methodically drawing me in only to leave me hanging just when I start loving it. And then the fifth book ties all the themes together in such a magnificent way that it's several days before I realise that it doesn't actually resolve the plot at all.

Because obviously, nothing gets resolved in the 20th century, which might be the main protagonist of the story. Especially in that Mexican city that acts like the main focus point of the story (not that the story is focused), where the poor come either to move on to the US or to earn money off their body, either as workers or as the women servicing the workers, and the rich come to live well off that. Especially off the women, who all seem to end up on the coroner's table and the police's "unsolved" folder. They blame a serial killer, and there probably is one, but even the busiest serial killer of the world couldn't account for a fraction of the deaths. The flashy, extravagant ones, sure; but then there's the regular, boring, everyday murders that pile on top of them; we stare ourselves blind at the unusual violence while the "normal" stuff just goes by unseen, a part of the world we accept. For 200 pages Bolaño goes on and on, listing death death death and all the detail around it, while the cops who try to solve the problem spend their free time in the pub telling jokes like "Why do kitchens have windows? So women can see the world."

And around that, using it as a springboard, Bolaño draws up the story of where we are, the 20th century and how it got here, the lie and how we told it; society, arts, wars, and that which came after the wars when everyone agreed that it's a lot easier by applying the same ideas within society rather than against it. It's not a rollercoaster of a novel; it's a hall of carnival mirrors, where you meet yourself everywhere, both as a victim and as a perp, whether it's set at the Eastern Front in the 1940s or at a literature seminar in 1990s Italy. Everywhere, Bolaño finds new structures to play off, new angles, new corners we don't want to look around, and there I stand in a labyrinth of darkness and humour and storytelling and bitter medicine and can't find my way out again. And mankind keeps its eye on the flashing lights and impressive but abnormal carnival acts, while we keep marching in the same footsteps towards an unheard-of but all too familiar fate.

Do you know what that means?

You should read this.