Roberto Bolaño died of liver failure in 2003 in Spain, many people think the cause was drug use; his family and agent deny this, emphatically.
The New Yorker published a short story by Bolaño in the Aug 4. 2008 edition, CLARA , translated, from the Spanish, by Chris Andrews, translator of Distant Star and three other books by Bolaño.
Clara is a young women, the story is told by one of here admirers. Her character is drawn naturally, she seems like one of your acquaintances or friends. We never learn the name of the narrator, but he is smitten by her from the first line, till the last. Clara dies at the end just like the writer Bolaño, you can’t help but think about that connection. The story was published in English a year after his death.
She had big breasts, slim legs, and blue eyes. That’s how I like to remember her. I don’t know why I fell madly in love with her, but I did, and at the start, I mean for the first days, the first hours, it all went fine; then Clara returned to the city where she lived, in the south of Spain (she’d been on vacation in Barcelona), and everything began to fall apart.
One night I dreamed of an angel: I walked into a huge, empty bar and saw him sitting in a corner with his elbows on the table and a cup of milky coffee in front of him. She’s the love of your life, he said, looking up at me, and the force of his gaze, the fire in his eyes, threw me right across the room. I started shouting, Waiter, waiter, then opened my eyes and escaped from that miserable dream.
bq.
So begins the tale. It is the story of a beautiful bright star named Clara, a that star burns out and leaves the narrator in the darkness. CLARA is not a ground breaking story, it isn’t perfect but it is affecting, it has a beautiful naturalness and is a great introduction to Roberto Bolaño.
