The Skating Rink

All of the members of the After School Sports Club are enjoying their field trip to an ice-skating rink except for Alyssa who fears she will get hurt if she falls.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

A phenomenally unusual three-way murder mystery. With a murder at its heart, Roberto Bolano’s The Skating Rink is, among other things, a crime novel. Murder seems to have exerted a fascination for the endlessly talented Bolano, who in his last interview, according to The Observer, “declared, in all apparent seriousness, that what he would most like to have been was a homicide detective.” Set in the seaside town of Z, north of Barcelona, The Skating Rink is told in short, suspenseful chapters by three male narrators, and revolves around a beautiful figure skating champion, Nuria Martí. A ruined mansion, knife-wielding women, political corruption, sex, and jealousy all appear in this atmospheric chronicle of a single summer season in a seaside town, with its vacationers, businessmen, immigrants, bureaucrats, social workers, and drifters.

Evan is invited to a birthday party at a local skating rink but does not know how to skate. He attends the skating party, but has a difficult time skating. Evan and his grandmother devise a plan to help Evan learn to skate. The learning process is slow in the beginning, but as Evan continues to practice, he makes friends at the skating rink, participates in skating games and races, and learns to skate well. When Evan's Dad takes him ice skating at the largest mall in the city, he discovers that ice skating is also fun and Evan eventually finds himself playing ice hockey.