This week I read Amulet by Roberto Bolaño. The novel follows the narrator Auxilio Lacouture, a woman from Uruguay and the coined “mother of Mexican poetry.” She works at a university in Mexico City, and when she realizes the university is surrounded by an army, she finds herself hiding alone and reflecting on her past. I found this novel to be unique as the author tells a story while also addressing the truth of the political climate.
The novel’s narration reminded me a lot of Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon. It followed the narrator’s stream of consciousness. You can learn a lot about a character by following their every thought. As the novel explores Auxilio’s memories, I found her to be very unsure of herself, “one day I arrived in Mexico without really knowing why or how or when.” The memories of her personal self seem like she is unsure of her purpose or like she was trying to reimagine herself, whereas when she talked about the poets she worked for, her voice seemed more determined, like she understood their lives and their purpose more than her own. It might have been her attempt to connect with a higher society to which she felt a stranger.
I had difficulty determining the past from the present and the future throughout the novel. Auxilio was observing, commenting, and participating in the events of the book all at once. This was a unique way of narration, I thought. As we discussed in the last few classes, the theme of memories has been a pattern throughout the course, but this one was the most interesting to me out of all the novels and different methods of exploring memories. Somehow, it felt like even when we were in the present, the narrator reflected as the events had already happened.
Although the historical context is important in the novel, I felt like the author perfectly addressed the political climate in a way that allowed me, as a reader with no previous knowledge of the conflict, to understand the author’s point of view and what was meant to be taken away. So I guess in that way, the historical context was not important at all. So my questions for the class are, what role did time play throughout the events in the novel? How did this story of memory differ from others we have read in the class?