Una Novelita Lumpen

I bought this small book while I was waiting in a pub in Lastarria, a Santiago neighborhood. A really nice bookstore is located just around the corner, and I needed some pass-time. Therefore Bolaño and a small book, which I could “presumably” read until my wife would arrive.
A novella situated in the lower class Rome, in the periphery. But that actually does not matter for the story, but it made me buy the book. The setting is shortly told: a couple of a sister and a brother are left as orphans after a car accident of their parents. They decide to live on their own. The story is told by the sister, Bianca, in retrospect a long time after the events. They try to carry on with live but soon after she will leave school, they she starts to work as hairdresser to earn some money, they eat not very well. Then the brother brings some older “friends” to sleep in the apartment, then they stay and live there. After a while she accepts them to sleep with her, she is indifferent. It seems to steer to a climax, but it won’t happen. It is just a story about the a life without orientation and values, it could also stand for almost all lower class families, which do not know how to get out of the vicious cycle of poverty and lack of education.