[Daniel del Real]

This is the second novel from Bolaño I've ever read (The Savage Detectives being the first one) and by now I can tell two things: How immense is Bolaño's contribution to the post-boom Latin American literature and the huge sorrow I felt after finishing the book for losing this absolutely talented writer so soon.

In this short novel (152 pp in my edition) I can clearly see some tendencies that apparently Bolaño repeats in his novels, or at least he has in the two previous I've read.

The first one is the existance of literary groups, mainly formed by young poets who are trying to create a literary movement that changes the actual overview of how poetry is made.

The second is the characters who always have wandering personalities, due to exile or different circumstances, just like Bolaño himself.

The third one, and one of the main topics of the acclaimed novel 2666, the appearance of mysterious writers, who after making an important contribution to local literature disappear, being almost impossible to hear from them again. This is the case of Cecilia Tinajero in the Savage Detectives and Carlos Wieder in Distant Star.

He is introduced in the story as Alberto Ruiz-Tagle a good looking young man who is in a poetry group along with the narrator, his best friend and two beautiful sisters from whom the narrator is in love.

Carlos Wieder which is the real name of Ruiz-Tagle is a former army pilot, who later is hired to write poetry in the sky using his airplane and the smoke coming out of it. He gains notoriety this way and becomes even more popular.

After this, the sisters are murdered and little by little the narrator and his friends starts to suspect of Wieder. After a photograph exposition organized by Wieder, a spine chilling event takes place and Wieder has no option but to disappear.

His clues are followed from Mexico to Spain and many other places.

The rest of the novel is the story if Carlos Wieder a mystery man, an amazing poet, a sky writer and a possible murder; a character that only Bolaño can create with such majesty and realism.

Another excellent novel that reaffirms Roberto Bolaño as the best writer in Spanish language in the last 20 years.