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This week’s reading was on Amulet by Roberto Bolaño. I was intrigued by the very first words in this book, “[i]n our misery we wanted to scream for help, but there was no one there to come to our aid” (Pertonius). This seemed like a very dark start compared to the previous book’s we’ve analyzed. …

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This week’s novel was Amulet, written by Roberto Bolano. The novel begins with the line, “this is going to be a horror story” (1), and my mind instantly thought of ghosts, demons, creepy dolls (watching Chucky at 5 years old has forever changed the way I see dolls). However, the narrator also claims that “it […] read full post >>

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 … Continue reading → read full post >>

 The Amulet was a book that surprised me. Initially, I thought we would be looking at a typical horror story with detailed violence, but this one was a different kind of horror. I believe that I can call this book a horrific one because being stuck in one place and not able to leave is claustrophobic. On top of the movement that was going on, the fact that someone could take her is terrifying. Especially if you are a young student trapped, I couldn't imagine how scared and confused I would be. She was stuck in the Philosophy and Literature section of the university, which she repeated a lot in the text. This repetition is significant because she was able to read literature and occupy her time in remembering her past and engaging in poetry. In the time she spent locked away, she was lonely, and feeling needs of deprivation and hunger started to arise in her. As human beings, we seek out interaction and personal relationships. A human cannot survive in isolation; it has significant detrimental effects on the brain. One of Auxilio's coping skills was to immerse herself in her past life and remember all her memories as if they were occurring now to occupy her brain in this time of loneliness. It was her comfort tool. I am still confused by the book's chronology as she talks about her past as if it was in the past, but over time, the chronology gets blurred as her memories become more fragmented. She talks about things occurring in the future which makes me think. How does she know this? The question I have is, what was the significance of the future? Was she talking about the future or recollecting her past from the point of view of her past self before it occurred? 

After watching the lecture, I know that the themes and feelings of the movement are memories of the survivors of this attack. Bolano creates this book as a time capsule for future generations to see and uncover how it felt to be alive in that time. The future dates appearing in the novel create this feeling of a time capsule and that things will be discovered in later years. Exactly what a time capsule is. A quote that made me genuinely think that this book represents a time capsule was: 

"And although the song that I heard was about war, about the heroic deeds of a whole generation of young Latin Americans led to sacrifice, I knew that above and beyond all, it was about courage and mirrors, desire and pleasure."

This quote mentions how the movement affected the lives of the Latin American youth and how it was brutal and a sacrifice (which is obvious). But later, people would find out the true story hidden behind the movement. It was about their courage and ability to survive in such a hard place. This story is the time capsule Bolano has created for future generations to read and learn. 

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 The Amulet was a book that surprised me. Initially, I thought we would be looking at a typical horror story with detailed violence, but this one was a different kind of horror. I believe that I can call this book a horrific one because being stuck in one place and not able to leave is claustrophobic. On top of the movement that was going on, the fact that someone could take her is terrifying. Especially if you are a young student trapped, I couldn't imagine how scared and confused I would be. She was stuck in the Philosophy and Literature section of the university, which she repeated a lot in the text. This repetition is significant because she was able to read literature and occupy her time in remembering her past and engaging in poetry. In the time she spent locked away, she was lonely, and feeling needs of deprivation and hunger started to arise in her. As human beings, we seek out interaction and personal relationships. A human cannot survive in isolation; it has significant detrimental effects on the brain. One of Auxilio's coping skills was to immerse herself in her past life and remember all her memories as if they were occurring now to occupy her brain in this time of loneliness. It was her comfort tool. I am still confused by the book's chronology as she talks about her past as if it was in the past, but over time, the chronology gets blurred as her memories become more fragmented. She talks about things occurring in the future which makes me think. How does she know this? The question I have is, what was the significance of the future? Was she talking about the future or recollecting her past from the point of view of her past self before it occurred? 

After watching the lecture, I know that the themes and feelings of the movement are memories of the survivors of this attack. Bolano creates this book as a time capsule for future generations to see and uncover how it felt to be alive in that time. The future dates appearing in the novel create this feeling of a time capsule and that things will be discovered in later years. Exactly what a time capsule is. A quote that made me genuinely think that this book represents a time capsule was: 

"And although the song that I heard was about war, about the heroic deeds of a whole generation of young Latin Americans led to sacrifice, I knew that above and beyond all, it was about courage and mirrors, desire and pleasure."

This quote mentions how the movement affected the lives of the Latin American youth and how it was brutal and a sacrifice (which is obvious). But later, people would find out the true story hidden behind the movement. It was about their courage and ability to survive in such a hard place. This story is the time capsule Bolano has created for future generations to read and learn. 

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The opening of the novel, wherein the narrator and self-proclaimed “mother of poetry,” Auxilio Lacouture, claims this novel is going to be a horror story but it won’t seem like it from her perspective could not have held more true. As a reader, it was so easy to get distracted by the lifestyles of Auxilio […] read full post >>

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, particularly the style of prose. I love poetry, so this was a riveting read. It is not surprising that an author writing about poets is a poet himself, and thus uses poetic language/devices in his writing. One of my favourite lines is, “women, dust and literature have always gone together” […] read full post >>

I found this week’s reading to be really captivating, and from reading some other blog posts, I think this is a fairly objective opinion. Personally, I didn’t have that much background education on Latin American history, and I found Amulet … Continue reading → read full post >>

Balano seems like a very interesting author with such global fame, it made me beyond excited to begin reading it. As I have read in other blog posts, we all found this one hard to put down! My favourite thing about this course is finding these surprising novels, that move me in a way that […] read full post >>

“All she, and Bolaño, can do is ensure that the echoes of their song, the traces of that generosity and courage, endure as both promise and warning.” This statement from Professor Beasley-Murray, for me, was a very precise one-sentence summary of the meaning behind Roberto Bolaño’s Amulet. Indeed, this story seems to be the living […] read full post >>