There are a pair of immediate observations concerning By Night in Chile. The first involvees its lyrical quality; this is more a cycle of poems than mere standard novella. Episodes unfold and the focus clips along back to the Narrator, who isn't as unreliable as I first guessed. The second acute sense from the book is one of dread. There are a number of darkened hallways, closed doors, and isolated hilltops in the book. One gathers gradually that it isn't sage to look around too closely.

Confining itself to the Gothic whsiper, By Night in Chile does echo in one trope. There's certainly depth and poetic violence; what I think seperates Bolano is the imaginary bibliography; that Borgesian codex of spectral works which exist in world just so close yet distant from our own dusty trevails.