The story of My Tender Matador, takes place in the Chile of 1986, having read Roberto Bolaño’s Distant Star, which is partly set in Chile in the immediate aftermath of the coup of September 11. Lemebel’s novel feels like a continuation of the story of the struggle against the military junta over a decade later. Along with the chronology of these two stories, another comparison I could make is in the characters themselves, while Distant Star is about university students having to experience the oppression and cruelty of the military’s dictatorship, My Tender Matador, is about the experience of those who are not directly connected to the conflict, but innocent bystanders who become unwilling participants in the struggle. While there are multiple characters in the novel, there are four principal characters who’s actions the novel focuses on, the Queen, Carlos, Lucia/Lucy and Augusto.

Although Lemebel’s book is set in the Chilean military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, and Pinochet himself is a character, I would argue that the story of the novel is not about him at all, but rather about Queen and her romantic relationship with Carlos. I find the relationship between Queen and Carlos to be really interesting, as someone who identifies as queer myself, because of its authenticity and it emotional weight. I use the word romantic relationship instead of sexual, because to my understanding, to Queen and Carlos their connection to one another is completely romantic, while both characters express sexual interest in each other at times throughout the story, that is not the primary concern between them. While the both of them want each other, in both physical and spiritual ways, by the end of the novel it becomes clear that they need each other. In a physical sense, Carlos needs Queen’s apartment to hide the maps and weapons for the revolutionary movement, and Queen needs Carlos’ physical company. In the spiritual sense, Carlos needs the reassurance and joy that Queen brings to his life and Queen needs the same from Carlos.

In my mind, Pedro Lemebel wrote My Tender Matador for a queer audience, because the ideas and experiences can be only understood in a queer context. The novel not only acts as a piece of literature against the military regime, but also as a piece of queer and feminist literature for Chile.

My question for this week is: What did you think of the idea of the ‘importance of appearances’ that appears throughout the novel, do you think that Lucy/Augusto are similar to Queen/Carlos?