Week 11: Bolaño’s “Amulet”

Auxilio Lacouture, an Uruguayan girl, finds herself stuck in a bathroom stall in the women’s bathroom at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City whilst the nation’s army is wreaking havoc amongst the students and professors on campus. When in this position, she takes the readers through her recollections of her perception of her life.

The trauma that she experienced being in that washroom is emphasized with each mention of the year 1968 and the reflection of the waning moon on the bathroom tiles. The fragmented memories she presents remind us of how Perec’s book also dealt with the long-lasting effects of trauma on memory recollection. Upon reading the first line of the book where it said “horror story”, I was already quite uneasy about it (pg. 1). It drew me in, but also made me wary of what scenes we may be encountering as we continued with the story. One thing I noticed is that I often found myself getting lost when keeping track of the characters. This used to happen because the narrator would often mention these characters’ names without introducing the character. There would be no following sentence that described who they are, but eventually, after 3-4 sentences, we would get a brief description of how that new character played a role in Auxilio’s life. I got so lost at times that, for a second, I thought that Arturo and Arturito are different people!! I also found it very intriguing how the author described Auxilio’s interactions with different people and subtly hint at how she feels towards that person without stating it completely, especially when it comes to Elena. I certainly felt invested in their friendship or her one-sided love towards her and felt a little bit of the heartbreak that she did.

The way the text was written is also quite interesting. As this book stuck to the theme of books we’ve read in the past, it consisted mainly of streams of consciousness where several memories would be splayed out. I found it especially interesting how this time, the dialogues were not kept separate from the narrative text. It was presented to the reader as though someone was actually there telling us the story instead of taking us into a flashback sequence. For example, when dialogue is exchanged between two people in this scene  “And what am I supposed to do? asked Arturo. You’re not afraid said Ernesto,” it makes the overall experience of hearing this exchange seem so realistic (pg. 84). The entire book is written in that style where it really makes the reader feel like they’re sinking more and more into this very long story that their friend is narrating to them. Oftentimes, I found myself getting lost and not being able to keep track of the sequence of events happening since the plotline would often jump around. Regardless, I found this to be a very enjoyable read and I’m excited for our discussion on Thursday!

A question that I have for the audience is do you think the author did a good job of secretly revealing Auxilio’s sexuality to the readers?