The Savage Detectives was the best book I read last year, so I definitely came into 2666 with high expectations. They're very similar books in some ways, sprawling and disconnected more weaving different threads around a point than a traditional narrative. As well as a fascination with the freaks and malcontents of Mexico.
But The Savage Detectives has a softer melancholy feel, and a stronger centre point following the tragi-comic lives of the protagonists as well as poetry in general. Whereas 2666 feels much darker and unforgiving, the centre point is the tangled bodies of two hundred dead women. But hey, I haven't finished it yet and I think once I get to the end of this chapter it will become gripping again.
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