My favorite story in this collection is the one about Pepe, the young nephew of Kafka's Josephine the Singing Mouse. The nephew is a rat, and works as a cop. ( )

The five short stories that start this collecting were excellent. The two essays that follow were somewhat inaccessible to me. Overall, I liked it and will have to find more Bolaño to read. ( )

I was worried when I ordered this book that I was making the mistake of many completists - would this be a good Bolano, like Distant Star, or a barrel-scraping like Woes of the True Policeman?

Fortunately, this book offers some true, classic Bolano, and serves - in places - as an almost perfect introduction to his style. "The Insufferable Gaucho" is an excellent meditation on identity and madness; "Police Rat" is a police procedural set in the sewers; and "Alvaro Rousselot's Journey" is a Borgesian delight. There are missteps - subjectively speaking - such as "Jim" and "Two Catholic Tales", although the latter is worth rereading to figure out the overlap between the two pieces.

Bolano did not achieve acclaim for his essay writing, which besides does not always survive the translation away from Spanish. But "Literature + Illness = Illness" proved quite fascinating, especially with its focus on the interplay (and importance) of sex, books, and travel.

All in all, an excellent collection that deserves its place on the bookshelf next to 2666 and By Night in Chile. ( )

The short stories are good, but not incredible. I don't know the history of each story or whether this book was in fact edited together under the oversight of the author, but it feels like it could have been a posthumous collection of otherwise discarded stories, especially since it's finished with two essays.

The story 'Police Rat' is my favorite of the stories, though I was a little thrown by the characterization (they are rats!). Nothing in the fiction part of the book really impressed me like the stories in Last Evenings on Earth.

I was surprised to find the two essays as my favorite pieces overall in the book. Bolaño's style in these is very enjoyable and he leaves much to think about concerning life and literature. ( )

Some days I think Bolaño deserves all the hype and the accolades, and some days I'm just not feeling it. This collection delivers that mixed feeling - some brilliance, some above average work, and some head-scratchers - sometimes all within the same piece. And some days I just get tired of the unremittingly world-weary persona behind the words and wish for some unguarded passion or glimmer of transcendence. But that's just not who the man was. ( )