Bolano's book is separated into five fairly lengthy sections, so I'm going to also separate my thoughts similarly. That way I can write as a go along.

Book 1

This first book here introduces us to 4 literary critics who are obsessed with a particular reclusive German author, Archimboldi. The story introduces their backstories, their involvement with Archimboldi, and their eventual entanglement. Here, Bolano sticks out to me as an unabashed teller of stories and fairly frank in his narrative approach, allowing the story to unfold without leading the reader along. His (or the translator's) prose is at once plain (never becoming flowery for too long), poetic (articulate placement of words), textured (there seems to be a sloppy cadence to everything), and rich (dense with information). The story unfolds in a way which reminds me of Marquez, always playing with the reader's expectations and being willing to expand or shy away from different parts of the story for dramatic affect. A steady narrator is also something which Bolano seems to ape, in this case from Sebald, with his meandering from story to story, town to town, dream to dream.
So far and throughout this first book, Bolano's emphasis on dreams seems to be a primary theme that runs through his world. So while his world seems a materialistic one, at least from the reader's point of view the images found in the numerous dreams and encounters seem to spill out. A dream in which Bolano spends time describing the arm of a statue might be followed within the next 10 or so pages by the word arm. Not something which sounds threatening at first, but these links are frequent enough that there's clearly some psychological film tying these characters, pages, words together beyond the linear walk from page to page. Another similar dynamic can be explained by analyzing the following sentence:

[...] they dug up the barbecue, and a small of meat and hot earth spread over teh patio in a thin curtain of smoke that enveloped them all like the fog that drifts before a murder and vanished mysteriously as the women carried the plates to the table leaving clothing and skin impregnated with its aroma.

This sentence shows up after they're in mexico and have heard about the missing/murdered women. The particular situation, however, has little to do with the murders, but this violence is injected here and other places through the later portion of book one. And although by the end of book one no real violence has taken place, these hints of violence can be seen as some other "off screen" character's dream bleeding into the narrative. This rotting of the very walls the reader has come to depend upon has a unnerving and often revolting way of bring this violence closer to the reader who's let their guard down.
The love triangle (or love square?!?) that developes between the critics is the main engine through this first part of the story and I couldn't help but feel a little cheated by the cliche, but Bolano does his best to spice things up. The two male, non-crippled critics fall in love with the female critic and they slowly become each other. Perhaps symbolic of Spain and France's relationship, perhaps not, but either way it provides a psychological depth to the drama which is furthered by the protagonists' academic Man Without Qualities-esc ambivalence. They all seem like something out of a Houellebecq novel: smart, book-y, Nietzschian. Sometimes your eyes would roll out of your head if they weren't so cute chasing Archimboldi around.
While you'll have to look beyond skin deep for an obvious philosophical message, it's clear that Bolano has mystery and ambiguity in mind. The reader doesn't know what's going to happen, neither do the characters, and I'm going to guess that our wise authors, Archimboldi and Bolano (rip), don't know either. More concretely, the visual artists the critics become interested by and travel to meet in the asylum holds an air of unknowableness. Why did he die? Why did he cut off his hand? Why is he in an asylum? Bolano likes to end chapters like this too, with several questions in a row.
There's also a lot to say about identity and race everyone of these characters and Bolano makes known the race of most every character's nationality. This introduces some level of paranoid conspiracy, a la pynchon, in addition to calling into question the nature of authenticity and the problem of alienation, both within and outside your own country. I know this'll be a continued theme.

Book 3

From the end of part 1 you can tell that Balano has no intention of fulfilling promises that other, tight fisted authors might feel obligated to, but it’s here in part three where the locus of time, place, and, now, narrative has finds itself fully up for estrangement. The back tabloid writer, Fate, is our new main character and, instead of starting in Europe, now we start closer to Mexico, but still alienated from Santa Teresa’s problems in the city of New York and Chicago. The story begins with a paragraph, which we can assume is a flash forward, where someone, probably Fate, is being tortured. But as soon as the paragraph has begun, it ends and we’re back to ‘90s New York. After Fate’s mother dies, he is sent on assignment to Chicago to meet an Black Panther turned cook book author. The scenes in New York and Chicago are filled with slapstick, in spite of Fate’s gruff and stoic demeanor, but includes some anecdotes related to where America sits. There’s some commentary on politics and race (ie the last black socialist in Brooklyn and the black publication that Fate works for), but it primarily feels like the scenery on the side of the road which colors the landscape as we venture into the heart of darkness. African American struggle feels it teeders on an edge of a pit. A pit which at the bottom lies Santa Teresa.
Fate gets called in to do a story about a fight in Santa Teresa. He says okay, and then the next number of pages are on his journey down there his stay at a hotel with other sports writers, sizing up the fighters, and the fight itself. His introduction isn’t too dissimilar to Amalfitano’s. In his short stint in the city he quickly picks up the oddities, all of which seem heightened but him being black. He hears about the murders etc etc. The city of Santa Teresa once again presents its unnerving quality of being a lively, bustling city with inequalities of wealth and a desert climate, where taken at face value something seems to not add up. Almost like a stage hand on scene change has forgotten to gather the right props, or a computer has forgotten to flip the right bits. But it’s here the Fate’s, and the reader’s, job to figure out what on the part of these conductors is merely forgetfulness and what is intention.
The story gets cooking when, at the fight, Fate meets up with a previous acquaintance who happens to be dating Amalfitano’s daughter. This is the first tie to the previous stories, in terms of characters, and starts to give meaning to Fate’s very literary name. The fight is over quickly and Fate tags along with these new friends to go to bars and clubs. Fate finds Amalfitano’s daughter attractive, people are doing drugs, and things keep going further and further into the night. At some point they end of at one of the party’s house and they put on a snuff film. At this point a few not mean or macho, but no doubt sketchy characters show up, and at this point Fate is in over his head. Only his attractedness to Amalfitano’s daughter explains why he’s become so wrapped up in everything and now he’s starting to get nervous. He’s lost track of where the girls of the group are, assuming that they’re somewhere in the house having sex, he gets sketched out and runs through the house looking for the Amalfitano’s daughter. In a scene with little to no internal monologue, he finds her, he tells here that they’re leaving, gets a gun pulled on her, beats the guy up, and leaves. Now morning, Fate and the girl are on the run. Someone shows up at the hotel looking for them. A “police” car is parked in front of Amilftano’s house. They eventually escape to Arizona.
Previous to the fight, Fate had met a journalist who was investigating the murders of women. Fate is interested in the story, himself a journalist, and tries to get his paper to have him write something about the murders to no avail. The journalist does invite Fate to come with her to prison to interview the leading suspect of the murders, a main character of the fourth part. He initially declines this invitation, but on his “escape” out of Mexico he ends up meeting the convict. The meeting of the convict and escape is relayed in jumps back and forth between threads, resulting in the literary equivalent of the forging of a Damascus blade.
While the last two parts ended inconclusively, this section allows the reader some kind of conclusion. But we’re here to ask ourselves which of the endings, taken without regard to their conclusiveness, is the most settling. Fate’s story is no doubt one of fate and no doubt one of danger, but Balano refuses to tell us why. And, like the biblical corpus, Balano tells us to by placing this book in this series of books something. Amalfitano isn’t crazy… probably. Fate saved his daughter from becoming another in a series of murders… probably. But probably leaves us with something unknown. A book is filled with stories, but stories aren’t good enough to tell us why. We know that, in our day to day, the stories we tell ourselves are partially lies. Lies that get us between breakfast and lunch well enough, but lies. Lies nonetheless. If we were to be an art critic in Europe looking for meaning, we could lie to ourselves. In fact we could lie to ourselves all day long and be all right, as long as we made it to work on time and answered the phone. But what if your daughter might be in danger?… Staring at the ambiguity of a supposed, deep piece of art tells you what? The statistics say your daughter isn’t in as big a danger as you feel (and you feel pretty bad). But now this happens. You’d think that you’ve solidified your fears, but instead you just find yourself looping (up or down, I don’t know) on the ambiguous ladder that your thoughts have climbed (up or down, I don’t know).
This message is an existential one, but it’s also a political one. The ambiguity between the narratives of the mind find themselves paralleled in the limbs of the state. Santa Teresa’s police, professors, polititions, capitalists, cartels, upper class, lower class, etc are all in bed with each other. This is not insidious, it’s a fact of life. But the blame, intrinsic to narratives, rhythmically pulses from one scapegoat to the next from paragraph to paragraph. Does this turn into victimization? Well, who are the women of Santa Teresa if not victims? Balano’s solution seems to be, in part, one which emphasizes accountability, determination, and understanding, as seen in the leftist feminist congresswoman, seen in part 4.