Book Review: "Cowboy Graves" by Roberto Balaño

Roberto Balaño’s novel “2666” was written when he was sick and dying, “Cowboy Graves” is a compilation of short stories written on his deathbed. When I read “2666” I was absolutely astounded. I spent approximately two days reading it and then the next week going back and forth over the book, its structure, its story and its brilliance. A rugged mixture between Sci-Fi and realism, it takes over the mind and you, the reader, must piece together a story in which the puzzle pieces do not fit as obviously as you would like to think. Without giving too much away, if you are new to his novels then I would start with “2666” as it is a masterpiece. If you have already read it then you can check out my review of the book here.

“Cowboy Graves” was something that confused me to begin with. The opening to the first story is amazingly written in this classic Roberto Balaño style of mixing atmosphere and character together in this blended reality of both what it is like to be the character and where they are in their life right now. With Balaño, when you read the very first paragraph of the very first page, it really puts you in time and place with the character and it gives you a lot more information than you were initially hoping for.

“My name is Arturo and the first time I saw an airport was in 1968. It was November or December, maybe the end of October. I was fifteen then and I did not know whether I was Chilean or Mexican and I did not care much either way. We were going to Mexico to live with my father. We tried to leave twice. The first time we didn’t make it and the second time we did. The first time, as my mother and sister were talking to my grandmother and two or three other people I have forgotten, a stranger came up and gave me a book. I know that I saw his face - I scanned the whole length of him because he was so tall and he smiled and made a motion inviting me to accept his unexpected gift. I have forgotten his face too…Then he was gone and I remember sitting on one of the suitcases and reading the book…”

The beginnings to most of the stories in this book are within the same sort of realm of language. It is both very straightforward about what is going on with an air of mystery, an underlying metaphor of things unknown and why things are the way they are. We have the theme of nationality, which is huge in Balaño’s works and whether one cares about where one is from in the grand scheme of things. Then, we have the theme of the unexpected - something that Balaño was very good at. He did not just make things unexpected though, they happened for a reason and yet, the reader is forced to go over and look for that reason from what they have just read.

Be that as it may, I think these stories were badly compiled. The stories are each very different from each other and I think that it would have been better with some revising, maybe even splitting into the more serious and the more satirical ones. The writing is absolutely brilliant but I personally do not like it when too many genres and sub-genres mix together in the same book. It becomes difficult to take yourself out of one genre and get stuck into the other one.