This week, I read ‘Amulet’ by Roberto Bolano.
I found the first paragraph of the story interesting. The narrator started off by telling the readers that this story “…is going to be a horror story. A story of murder, detection and horror. But it wont appear to be, for the simple reason that I am the teller. Told by me, it won’t seem like that. Although, in fact, it’s a story of a terrible crime” (p 1). I never read a story that started off by telling what kind of story it will be, so it grabbed my attention and made me want to continue to read it. After reading the first paragraph, I was preparing myself for a violent story or the memories/fights of the war. However, the story was about a woman, Auxilio Lacouture, who was locked inside a washroom alone “..from the eighteenth to the thirtieth of September”(p 172). Specifically, the fourth floor washroom in the faculty of Philosophy and Literature building at the National Autonomous University (p 22). Due to the invasion of the army, the narrator locked herself inside the washroom for 12 days. With the terrifying situation outside, she tends to deal with her fear by looking back on her memories.
One of the most vivid moments to me was: when she was hiding in a stall, a soldier opened the washroom door and walked in. The detailed description of what had happened and what she was feeling makes me super nervous about what is going to happen. It felt as if I was hiding with her as well.
I like how the narrator described things, events, and people in detail. I noticed the narrator uses a lot of similes and metaphors to describe those. The detailed descriptions helped me imagine and picture the scenes in my head. Another thing I like is that the narrator used brackets/side notes to express her ‘inner feelings’.“…I became a bat, I left the university and wandered around Mexico city like a wraith (I can’t in all honesty say like a fairy, although I would like to) and drank and talked and attended literary gatherings (I knew where to find them all) ” (p20). The inner thoughts make me feel’ closer’ to the narrator as I am able to know more about her ‘inner’ feelings.
After Auxilio saw soldiers, tanks and riot police outside of the window, she went back to the washroom. That brings it to my question for the class: If you were in Auxilio’s situation, what would you do? Would you go back to the washroom and stay there or go somewhere else?