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Amulet

by Roberto Bolaño, Chris Andrews (Translator)

3.78 of 5 stars 3.78 · rating details · 1,776 ratings · 196 reviews

Amulet is a monologue, like Bolano's acclaimed debut in English, By Night in Chile. The speaker is Auxilio Lacouture, a Uruguayan woman who moved to Mexico in the 1960s, becoming the "Mother of Mexican Poetry," hanging out with the young poets in the cafes and bars of the University. She's tall, thin,brand blonde, and her favorite young poet in the 1970s is none other than...more

Hardcover, 192 pages

Published January 29th 2007 by New Directions (first published November 1999)

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Feb 03, 2012 Ian Graye rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2011, reviews, reviews-5-stars, bolano

When Only a Wedge Will Do

I read this because I’m a lazy cheapskate.

I bought it for $5 (reduced from $50) in a recent Borders sale.

But I was looking for a relatively short wedgie between larger undertakings, the next of which will be Haruki Murakami’s “1Q84”.

At 184 pages, it’s more of a novella than a novel (although I’ve never really understood or cared much for the distinction).

What’s important for me is how much the author put into those pages and how much we the readers get out of them.

As I w...more

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Apr 06, 2010 Greg rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I want to give this book five stars, but since I didn't give Savage Detectives or 2666 five stars I feel it's only fitting to give this four stars.

A lot of people gush about Bolano, so much that it's enough to turn off other people from him. That said, there are quite a few people who really dislike Bolano mostly because hipster's and others were all over him (but were they really? It seems to me like Bolano-mania is over and now it's safe to come out and read his work in peace, but I could be...more

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May 25, 2008 Scoobs rated it 3 of 5 stars

only 3 stars, but still worth the read.
the book is auxilio's (the mother of mexican poetry) reflection on her past and her future and i guess her present, in mexico in the 60's. all while holed up in a bathroom in a school that has been invaded and closed down by the mexican army. from the opening sentence i thought the book was going in a different direction than it actually did. expected more out of the book, but was still pleased with where it lead me.

there is something about Bolano and his...more only 3 stars, but still worth the read.
the book is auxilio's (the mother of mexican poetry) reflection on her past and her future and i guess her present, in mexico in the 60's. all while holed up in a bathroom in a school that has been invaded and closed down by the mexican army. from the opening sentence i thought the book was going in a different direction than it actually did. expected more out of the book, but was still pleased with where it lead me.

there is something about Bolano and his comma's that i just cant put my finger on. you know, the way he forms his sentences, makes them really work, stretches them out, and then, at the right moment, end them. a whole hell of a lot better than that. Then he will drop a short, but fucking sweet little beautiful sentence about death, the future, mexico, chile, etc. i want to write like that.

like this:

"And when I opened my eyes a shadow peeled away from a wall, moved onto the sidewalk about ten yards ahead, and began to come toward me, and I put my hand into my handbag, I mean my satchel from Oaxaca, and felt for my knife, which I always carried with me, as a precaution against urban emergencies, but the burning skin of my fingertips could feel only papers and books and magazines and even clean underwear (washed by hand, without soap, with water and sheer willpower, in one of the sinks of that dreamlike, omnipresent fourth-floor bathroom), but not the knife, ah, my friends, now there's another recurring and terribly Latin American nightmare: being unable to find your weapon; you know where you put it, but it's not there.
That's just our luck."

the part that really gets me is near the end when he starts name droppin' all sorts of authors. i think brian may have touched on this already, but after he mentions borges and adolfo bioy casares, two authors i'm briefly familiar with, but love, it makes me want to whip out the laptop, load up my amazon cart, or for starters, wikipedia, to see if all these names really exist and then to amazon, hoping for translations.

bring on the bolano. time to finish up the detectives and get ready for 2666!(less)

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Jul 16, 2008 Eugene rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

bolano's characters are some of the most beautiful. they miraculously avoid sentimentality while achieving a too-beautiful-to-speak-of romanticism -- though reducing them so is an error, that quality he gets really does tear me up...

his characters remind me of the vow of poverty monastics make. it isn't a negative vow--at least not for the nun. it is in fact a positive one, one that moves the renunciate closer to the divine. bolano's poets and losers and mothers are an equal type. and one way t...more bolano's characters are some of the most beautiful. they miraculously avoid sentimentality while achieving a too-beautiful-to-speak-of romanticism -- though reducing them so is an error, that quality he gets really does tear me up...

his characters remind me of the vow of poverty monastics make. it isn't a negative vow--at least not for the nun. it is in fact a positive one, one that moves the renunciate closer to the divine. bolano's poets and losers and mothers are an equal type. and one way to describe his natural, moving, ecstatic and elegiac style is to say that it simultaneously shows the mundane and profoundly human while it recognizes and manifests the divine (--or maybe better said: the cosmic).

AMULET is a slowly shifting machine, moving from a narrative built first on a natural and sad and graceful character development into a kind of modernized persephone-in-hell myth then into a creepy symbolic tale (though for what is hard to say) and finally into a long description of an icy, abstract landscape.

i probably didn't do a good job assigning the sections descriptions--and i missed a few--but there are distinct parts to this novel. and bolano gently leads the reader (and virgil and dante are explicitly mentioned) through these passages, a series of subtle changes. the book is one long song describing the horror story (that the narrator proclaims will not appear to be a horror story, but is, nonetheless) of living through history--in this case latin america's revolutionary 60s and 70s.

here's one paragraph, within which bolano seems to convey succinctly and impossibly some of the tumult of that era. a phone call is made asking about arturo (a boy who has gone from mexico to chile in 1973 to 'take part in the revolution') (and where he barely escapes execution):

"One night, at a party in Colonia Anzures, propped on my elbows in a sea of tequila, watching a group of friends trying to break open a pinata in the garden, it occurred to me that it was an ideal time to call Arturo's place. His sister answered the phone. Merry Christmas, I said. Merry Christmas, she replied sleepily. Then she asked where I was. With some friends. What's with Arturo? He's coming back to Mexico next month. When exactly? We don't know. I'd like to go to the airport, I said. Then for a while we said nothing and listened to the party noises coming from the patio. Are you feeling OK, his sister asked. I'm feeling strange. Well that's normal for you. Not all that normal; most of the time I feel perfectly well. Arturo's sister was quiet for a bit, then she said that actually she was feeling pretty strange herself. Why's that? I asked. It was a purely rhetorical question. To tell the truth, both of us had plenty reasons to be feeling strange. I can't remember what she said in reply. We wished each other a merry Christmas again and hung up." p.76.

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Sep 17, 2008 Paul rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Would have given it five stars, but the final 30 or so pages had a bit of an "ehh, I suppose it's time to start ending this," feel. In some ways I can't blame Bolano too much for that, as the book was less a plot than a (highly successful) evocation of place and mood, and it's difficult to succinctly wrap up a non-existent plot. All it can do is to quit having pages.

Bolano to me is at his best when writing about the outer edges of his own life, and here he does just that, using a female narrator...more

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Nov 21, 2008 Alex V. rated it 4 of 5 stars

I cannot stop reading Bolaño's books, expecting to hit a wall, but just as the wall approaches, it dissolves into mist. Amulet is similar to By Night in Chile in that it is a delirious narcissistic dream rant from a sideline player in a heady cultural climate. The narrator here is a woman hiding in a fourth floor bathroom as troops occupy a university. It's unclear if the tale that unfolds is a memoir, a mad fantasy, or a brief endorphin supernova at the moment of death; in the hands of this wri...more

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Aug 31, 2009 Maya Panika rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was a shining example of everything I love least about Latin American Literature. A florid, OTT, self-consciously ‘poetic’ style; the navel-gazings of ‘The Mother of Mexican Poetry’ as she sits trapped in the women’s lavatories during the 1968 Tlatelolco student massacre.

There’s everything you’d expect in a book of this kind: rose-tinted politics, the romanticised lauding of poets and poverty, a deal of obscure name-dropping (to show how intellectual the narrator is) and a fantasticall...more

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Jan 15, 2009 Tom rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As my first Bolaño novel I enjoyed this, but perhaps would have loved it more if I had read Savage Detectives first. Haunting, evocative, blah, blah, blah like the reviews all say. And definitely an enthralling voice in the narrator as the "mother of mexican poetry."

I just wish (and I hope this doesn't sound harsh) it had been a little longer and richer.

I did get turned onto some of the poets and artists in the book, but I couldn't help feeling a tiny wince of self-conscious discomfort at Bola...more

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Jun 01, 2013 Teresa rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: l2013

Depositei tanta esperança na leitura deste livro e nem metade consegui ler...

Uma mulher. Numa casa de banho. Sentada numa sanita. "...com as cuecas a algemar os tornozelos magros".
Recorda o tempo em que limpava o pó aos livros e observava jarras sem flores.
Não tem dentes. Coloca a mão na boca quando ri. Deve ser importante porque tem muitos parágrafos a explicar.
Conhece muitos nomes de poetas. E dormiu com alguns.

Muita história, cultura e política mexicana. Não percebo, nem vontade tenho de perc...more

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Jan 31, 2009 Rick rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Bolano, whose fame has expanded dramatically since his death six years ago, is perhaps the hottest international writer of the moment. His last published books, Savage Detectives and 2666, in the US have been huge bestsellers, top ten book listers, and prize collectors. This is the first of his books I’ve read and I wanted to like it more than I did. The book’s key sentence seems “History is like a horror story” because its first sentence is “This is going to be a horror story.” Set in Mexico Ci...more

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Dec 20, 2008 Fiona rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: spanish, out-on-loan

Auxilio is a middle-aged Uruguayan woman who loves poetry, and hangs out with poets and students in Mexico City. She is in the university when the army storms it in September of 1968, and spends 12 days or more holed up in a women's bathroom. During this time she has visions of the past and future - and since she's telling the story from some unknown point even further in the future, she knows that some of the visions did some to pass. But on the other hand, she "remembers" a meeting with a pain...more

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Nov 12, 2012 Pete Young rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Picador picked up a total of eleven Bolaño titles in 2009, and this was the first to be released in English after publication of his posthumous magnum opus 2666. There is a link between the two books: the year 2666 gets a mention here, included among the many other ramblings of Bolaño’s wonderful creation Auxilio Lacouture, a Uruguayan immigrant and the self-declared ‘mother of Mexican poetry’. She’s holed up in a Mexico City university washroom, hiding from the military as they try to quell stu...more

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Apr 28, 2012 Nathan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Yes, more Roberto B. Quick, cursory, glib review, coming at ya! I know nothing!

As I have admittedly fallen in love with this writer, it seemed obvious to finally read something that seems like a novella compared to the gargantuan 2666.

Auxilio Lacouture, the Uruguayan-born toothless "mother of Mexican poetry" is the only one to survive the military's invasion of the UNAM campus. She does it by happening to be in the bathroom, and by nearly starving herself before she leaves. After that she is for...more Yes, more Roberto B. Quick, cursory, glib review, coming at ya! I know nothing!

As I have admittedly fallen in love with this writer, it seemed obvious to finally read something that seems like a novella compared to the gargantuan 2666.

Auxilio Lacouture, the Uruguayan-born toothless "mother of Mexican poetry" is the only one to survive the military's invasion of the UNAM campus. She does it by happening to be in the bathroom, and by nearly starving herself before she leaves. After that she is forever altered by the incident. She is also a character in "The Savage Detectives," as well as Arturo Bolano, who may or may not be the author, some sly gamesmanship that R. Bolano has pulled a few times before (I mentioned a parallel in "Nazi Literature in the Americas" with the Jorge Luis Borges story, "Borges y yo." Arturo Bolano's inclusion has a similar effect here). The novel is also an offbeat valentine to Mexico City and its literary scene, albeit through the violent lens that is the reality of the Mexican existence, at least via Bolano. (He already cataloged/fictionalized Ciudad Juárez and its violent past in painstaking, meticulous detail in "2666," a year which is also referred to in this novel).

The novel is illusory, veiled, and often shrouded in poetic motifs that feel more like Baudelaire's prose poems, or those of Rimbaud. Still, there is certainly a Latin American feel, as the "amulet" of the title is the continual song of tragedy and ennui that the Latin American artist lives with, a quotidian sense of doom and corruption. The protagonist ends the novel with a vision of a song about war, and corruption, and about sacrifice.

The prose in this novel is gorgeous, evocative, and moving. I would say this is the most tender and emotionally affecting of the Bolano I have read. A citation:

"So there she was, my friends, the mother of Mexican poetry with a knife in her pocket, following two poets who still hadn't turned twenty-one down that turbulent river that was and is the Avenida Guerrero, comparable if not to the Amazon, for that would be an exaggeration, at least to the Grijalva, once honored by the song of Efraín Huerta (if I remember rightly), although the nocturnal Grijalva that is and was the Avenida Guerrero had long since lost its condition of original innocence, by which I mean that the urban version of the Grijalva, flowing in the night, was in every aspect a damned river, a river of the damned, ferrying corpses and corpses-to-be, black automobiles that appeared, vanished, and then reappeared, the same ones or their silent, demented echoes, as if the river of Hell were circular, which, now I come to think of it, is probably the case."

Allow me to to point out that the above citation is a single sentence.

The denouément (sorry for using that word! This is a worthy novel for such pretension/technical terms!) is a roll call of the important writers in Latin American history, given as the prophecy for their memories and the the altered way that their legacies will continue, along with the aforementioned song ("And that song has become our amulet.") about war and corruption, "courage and mirrors, desire and pleasure." Did I say the novel was illusory? (I loved reading this since I have read a lot of Lat. Am. literature, and many lesser known here in the USA were mentioned!) Anyway so the end times prediction calls out the important writers and how they will be read, the way that the tragedies of the moment will create a barren landscape where existing artistry is indistinguishable from the way it was originally created.

A compelling, moving book. Passionate, convicted, and beautiful*.

*Aside from the death and military coup as the central event in the protagonist's life.(less)

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Feb 07, 2012 Ben Dutton rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Just as he did with Estrella distante (Distant Star), an expansion of the last chapter of Literatura Nazi en América (Nazi Literature in the Americas), so Amuleto (Amulet) is an expansion of one section of Los Detectives Salvajes (The Savage Detectives). Auxilio Lacouture, a Uruguayan poet drifting around in Mexico, recounted, as she does here, the story of the 1968 incident when the army rolled into the university during the infamous Tlatelolco massacre. Lacouture hides in the toilet for twelve...more Just as he did with Estrella distante (Distant Star), an expansion of the last chapter of Literatura Nazi en América (Nazi Literature in the Americas), so Amuleto (Amulet) is an expansion of one section of Los Detectives Salvajes (The Savage Detectives). Auxilio Lacouture, a Uruguayan poet drifting around in Mexico, recounted, as she does here, the story of the 1968 incident when the army rolled into the university during the infamous Tlatelolco massacre. Lacouture hides in the toilet for twelve days during which she reads a book of poems and gradually loses her mind or discovers a new way of seeing, depending upon how you understand her narration.

Amulet is famous for the first appearance in Bolaño’s work of the number 2666 which would become the title of his epic ambitious masterpiece. “Then we walked down the Avenida Guerrero… Guerrero, at that time of night, is more like a cemetery than an avenue, not a cemetery in 1974 or in 1968, or 1975, but a cemetery in the year 2666, a forgotten cemetery under the eyelid of a corpse or an unborn child, bathed in the dispassionate fluids of an eye that tried so hard to forget one particular thing that it ended up forgetting everything else.” Amulet, then, may be one of the keys to unlocking the secrets of Bolaño’s work: it connects his works together; it creates a tapestry in which Bolaño’s characters witness the crimes of twentieth century South America, and seek a poetical ideal that may not exist.

Lacouture is the ‘Mother of Mexican Poetry’; as she states “I knew them all.” Her feverish reminiscences conceal and reveal an attitude to South American poetry and literature; there is at once a rebutting of the Marquez school and a willingness to embrace its forms for one’s own ends. In Amulet Bolaño systematically redraws the lines of South American fiction; it challenges what is allowed in the form, and looks forward, to a fiction less confined by the boundaries of magic realism and unwilling to directly face the tragedies that have befallen society. The final images, though indulging in a Borgesian whimsy, confirm this, as children come marching out of the night, singing: “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.” As John Banville noted: “hmm.” Bolaño may not always be clear, but once you have deciphered his code, the landscape is revelatory.

Amulet also confirms one of my suspicions about Bolaño: that his work is a series of connected pieces, which, when read together illuminate one another. Lacouture, as I have noted, appears again in The Savage Detectives, and her story, surrounded by all those other voices, takes on a deeper resonance: these are works that sound off one another, are imbued with qualities taken from each other. Bolaño is a intertextual writer, both regarding his own work, and the work of others. Bored with convention, he has striven to take the novel somewhere new: for that alone he needs to be applauded.(less)

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Jan 01, 2012 Bob rated it 5 of 5 stars

Takes a few characters and a small episode from The Savage Detectives and runs off with it for 180 pages. Auxilio Lacouture, a self-styled "Mother of Mexican Poetry" in the late 60s and early 70s, is an eccentric hanger-on of the literary scene and visionary near-madwoman who alternates between recounting chronological sequences of events, as colorful characters drink in the usual scruffy cafes and surrealistic flights of fancy.

As always with Bolaño's books, if you take the trouble to Google the...more

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Oct 29, 2011 Marike added it · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

Amulet by Roberto Bolano; translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews

An anecdote of this book: My friend E’s birthday is coming up. Usually I find her something that just says aha to me, that will be perfect. But this year I suddenly realised, I have not found something yet and there is not really time to order something online even if I could find it. So I worried. After a lunchtime coffee a colleague of mine asked met to pass by the bookshop for a moment with her. (I was not hopeful of a gift...more

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Sep 08, 2011 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The novel wanders quite a lot (fairly obvious, given the premise) - it reminds me a bit of Steve Erickson's tendency towards stream of consciousness, or [reaching here] of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five (re: "unstuck in time").

I did not dislike the novel - perhaps my expectations exceed what was possible, given the format. I'd been hoping for another 2666, and that's obviously unreasonable. The writing is still sound - though the plot is all over the place. There seems to be very little foc...more

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Sep 07, 2010 Seth Hahne rated it 4 of 5 stars

As a formalistic excursion, Amulet veers toward abstraction. Bolaño's apocalyptic pericopae within a singular pericope reminds me of Ishiguro's The Unconsoled in its happy willingness to throttle time and narrative senseless for the sake of its own greater mysteries. Only, at least, Bolaño makes his readers well-aware of this through his heroine's nagging reminders.

Auxilio, whose name is a plea for salvation—for assistance, for redemption, for a crutch, for help— is the figurative mother of Mex...more As a formalistic excursion, Amulet veers toward abstraction. Bolaño's apocalyptic pericopae within a singular pericope reminds me of Ishiguro's The Unconsoled in its happy willingness to throttle time and narrative senseless for the sake of its own greater mysteries. Only, at least, Bolaño makes his readers well-aware of this through his heroine's nagging reminders.

Auxilio, whose name is a plea for salvation—for assistance, for redemption, for a crutch, for help— is the figurative mother of Mexican poets. And therefore grandmother to Mexican poetry. She bears lengthy witness to the soul sickness that has swallowed the Latin American spirit, that hearkens the doom of the Mexican verse. From the bathroom of a deserted university, purged under the bootheel of martial conquer, she peers into the past and future and cries harbinger to fey tidings, a Cassandra of ignoble heritage.

Amulet is a grim recountment of the inefficacy of the Mexican poetry, that for all its strength and beauty and honesty and reality, it is despite all belief: utterly powerless. Auxilio's explication of nightmare is of course a call for help, a demand that things not be as they are and that they would be something else, something perhaps grand. Or worthwhile at any rate.

The Mexican poetry for her, and one may presume for Bolaño, stands as "the echo of nothingness." And yet, she notes that echo is forged of songs of war and love and courage and honour and pleasure and desire. And though she sees naught but abyssal terror as the poet's end, she remains hopeful that such songs of war and love might eventually end in victory rather than centuries and millennia of loss.

But not that hopeful.

Amulet is a cynical and realistic work. As Auxilio begins, "a story of murder, detection and horror"—though in a decidedly unconventional manner. By blending madness, love, sickness, and culture, Bolaño crafts an interesting and, perhaps,* provocative reading of the landscape of the poetic. And if Bolaño's critique of Mexican poetry stands, the reader is left to ask whether it might not be the case for the international and universal varieties, as well.

[*note: I only say perhaps because I am entirely unfamiliar with the terrain of Latin American poetry and cannot really say how provocative his work might actually be.]
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Jul 11, 2010 Sheenagh Pugh rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

This book sounded intriguing, and it was easy to read. But in the end it didn't deliver for me.

It concerns Mexican politics and culture around the late 60s and 70s - its fulcrum is a brutal 1968 campus invasion by the Mexican police during which a woman hides in a toilet for about 2 weeks. This sounds like either a real incident or at least a persistent urban myth; I don't know, because though I was around in '68, that year of student revolt, and very conscious of what was afoot in Europe, I don...more This book sounded intriguing, and it was easy to read. But in the end it didn't deliver for me.

It concerns Mexican politics and culture around the late 60s and 70s - its fulcrum is a brutal 1968 campus invasion by the Mexican police during which a woman hides in a toilet for about 2 weeks. This sounds like either a real incident or at least a persistent urban myth; I don't know, because though I was around in '68, that year of student revolt, and very conscious of what was afoot in Europe, I don't recall hearing a thing about events in Mexico. I'm not acquainted with Mexican poetry either, which is why I don't know which of the poets in the book are real and which invented - I suspect at least some of the older names are real, but that the younger are fictions. I haven't tried to find out if that's so, because it seems to me that most English readers will be coming from the same state of ignorance and they need to know if the novel crosses cultures successfully.

For me it didn't, quite. Its female narrator has an interesting voice, but I'm not sure what, in the end, she is saying. The tricksy narration, forever going back and forward, with her sometimes "remembering" events that haven't yet happened or maybe didn't happen, doesn't help. It might be different for Mexican readers who would naturally be better acquainted with the relevant history; it isn't clear to this reader what exactly happens to all the poets she describes so lovingly - do they become victims of the repressive rightwing government, or just go on wasting their time in local bars?

I also have some issues with the translation. For a start it doesn't seem sure whether it is using UK or US English. The spelling is UK English, but the idiom is sometimes US - eg "I better not" for "I'd better not". I can handle either, but the melange of both is disconcerting. There is a long passage near the end where the narrator, prophesying, consistently uses "shall" for "will" in a way that would be wrong either side of the pond - "who shall read Gilberte Dallas?" Most weirdly of all, the female narrator refers consistently to her "underpants". What? Neither in the US nor the UK do women call those garments underpants - only men wear those! The translator's name is Chris Andrews so presumably he's a native English speaker. Maybe he just doesn't know any women. (In the end I couldn't resist looking him up - he's Australian. Do Aussie women wear "underpants"? It's hard to credit.)

The writing does often have a dreamlike quality which is appealing, but neither the situation nor the characters hooked me enough to go back. (less)

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Feb 13, 2013 Neal Adolph rated it 3 of 5 stars

You likely have to be a far more intelligent reader than I to understand what is happening in this book when it is happening. And I don't feel like I get the chance to say that very often. This isn't because I am a uniquely intelligent man - I assure you that I am not - or that I am a particularly talented reader - I assure you I am not. It is because this is a challenging book that shocks you when you had no idea it was going to do so in 180 pages.

I should be honest. I picked up this book becau...more You likely have to be a far more intelligent reader than I to understand what is happening in this book when it is happening. And I don't feel like I get the chance to say that very often. This isn't because I am a uniquely intelligent man - I assure you that I am not - or that I am a particularly talented reader - I assure you I am not. It is because this is a challenging book that shocks you when you had no idea it was going to do so in 180 pages.

I should be honest. I picked up this book because I have been told to read Bolano. Though I own both The Savage Detectives and 2666, I refuse to read such hefty works in the middle of my writing my masters. I saw Amulet as a chance to get into the Bolano craze (has it passed now?) without having to carry around a tome for several weeks. I assumed that, as a novella, I would be able to get through it without too much challenge.

Which was foolish of me, in retrospect. But I am a happy fool. This is a good book, set in 1968 during the crisis of government occupation at the UNAM in Mexico City. It is a story of memory, and thought, and not directly about the crisis. And it is weaved in a way that you have no idea that this is what it is about until the narrator's delirium takes over near the end and suddenly, somehow, everything starts to make sense.

And it is complicated. Bolano was clearly a master of sentences and phrasing and pacing (which will lead me to read many of his other books). To that end, I'm not sure he was a master of metaphor or communication (which will lead me to read many of his other books with much more open eyes). I often raced through the chapters - each a stunning moment in writing and the narrative - and wondered what was happening and where the story was going and how this novella was a horror story (like the opening sentence tells us it is).

Ultimately, most things are revealed in the end. You just aren't sure that they understand what the revelation is - or at least, I wasn't. This could be because of his language and technique - I have read few books that are this impressively post-modern in style and structure. And so the issue with the book is not the author but me as the audience.

That said, I will read it again I expect. Books like this, where the ending is such an essential feature of the story, are worth reading again. I'm certain I will be more attentive though. And instead of looking for the meaning, I will look for what kind of magic the author has presented on the table-top.

A recommendation? Yes. Wholehearted? Yes. Easy read? Certainly not. But enjoyable, intoxicating, stunningly written. And, surely, a novel that will lead me to many of Bolano's other works.(less)

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Oct 09, 2012 Jim Elkins rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: chilean

This book really stays in your mind! I hadn't thought I would write a review, because Bolano is the Latin American author du jour in North America. But this novel has genuine staying power. The central image -- a woman cowering in the women's room on the fourth floor of the Philosophy and Literature building in UNAM in Mexico City during the police incursion -- is itself very memorable, but really it's her inner monologues, dreams, and hallucinations, and the strange sinuous voice that connects...more

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Jan 04, 2009 Tom rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

A fascinating counterpoint to DeLillo's Mao II, which questions the relevance of the writer in a world seemingly dominated by media images, especially those forced upon us by violent groups. In Amulet, however, Bolano seems to suggest that even if ignored in the present, the writer, in the end, creates the enduring legacy of anyone fighting corrupt systems. Hence, the narrator's moniker of "mother of poets," which she uses throughout the book.

This is second Bolano novel I've read (By Night in Ch...more

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Jul 20, 2012 PJJ Antony rated it 4 of 5 stars

ROBERTO BOLANO (1953-2003: Today completed reading Bolano’s novel AMULET. It is totally different from the conventional novel in concept, content, structure and narrative language. Initially it might evoke cosmetic resemblance to Marcel Proust but a closer examination demolishes that comparison. It is new genre altogether. Though the novelist is a Chilean, the backdrop of this novel is the political Mexico of the sixties. Latin American continent’s culture, politics, literature, painting etc are...more

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Jan 26, 2012 Enzo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: hage, favorites

Das passt auf keine Kuhhaut. Also, als Geschichte noch auf Pergament kam, da hätte diese Geschichte dort nix verloren gehabt. Und, naja, auch jetzt noch liest sicht das auch nicht so unproblematisch: Der geheiligte Ort, an dem die Autonomie der Universität ihre letzte Trutzburg fand, als sie 1968 mit Füßen getreten wurde, unrechtmäßig und respektlos? Der Ort, an dem sich die Gegenwart verzweifelt am Handgelenk der Zukunft festklammert, damit beide von der Gewalt der Ereignisse nicht für immer un...more Das passt auf keine Kuhhaut. Also, als Geschichte noch auf Pergament kam, da hätte diese Geschichte dort nix verloren gehabt. Und, naja, auch jetzt noch liest sicht das auch nicht so unproblematisch: Der geheiligte Ort, an dem die Autonomie der Universität ihre letzte Trutzburg fand, als sie 1968 mit Füßen getreten wurde, unrechtmäßig und respektlos? Der Ort, an dem sich die Gegenwart verzweifelt am Handgelenk der Zukunft festklammert, damit beide von der Gewalt der Ereignisse nicht für immer unwiederbringlich zerprengt werden? Der Ort, ein unvorstellbar kleines Örtchen, durch den alles, ALLES was es gibt in Mexiko und Lateinamerika und der Welt muss, damit es mehr schlecht als recht, aber wenigstens irgendwie weiterexistieren kann? Jaja, ich sags ja schon: Das Klo. Geschichte auf Klopapier? Nicht mal das bleibt uns, denn Auxilio spült die Chose in einem schwachen Moment herunter. Oder war es ein starker Moment? Niemand weiß es, niemanden interessiert es genau. Wo sollte man denn das aufschreiben, dass als die Autonomie der Universität und die mexikanischen Bürger mit Füßen getreten wurden, dass zu dieser Zeit Auxilio Lacouture als einzige den Wiederstand darstellte, auf der Frauentoilette im vierten Stock der Fakultät für Literatur und Philosophie der UNAM? Wer, bitte, würde das aufschreiben wollen. Das taugt doch nicht zum Nationalmythos und nicht mal zur Heldengeschichte und nicht mal zur Sau, die man diese Woche durchs Dorf jagt. Eine unerhörte Begebenheit, die besser unerhört bleibt. Auxilio hat wenig dran zu ändern. Wer würde ihr das schon glauben? Sicher hat mans gehört, da war wer auf der Toilette in der UNAM während alldem und es war ein Kerl, oder naja tut ja nichts weiter zur Sache, aber man meint gehört zu haben, dass es auf jeden Fall jemand war, der grundverschieden war von dieser Einwanderin, die sich verdingt an der UNAM aber nicht dort studiert und sowieso mittendrin und fehl am Platz ist zugleich. Also, diese Geschichte will keiner: lesen, hören, aufschreiben, glauben. Weder eins noch das andere und schon gar nicht alles -- und vielleicht gerade deswegen ist es gut, dass es dieses Buch gibt, in dem man davon lesen kann, dass es niemanden einen Scheiß interessiert, dass zwölfmal der Mond über die Kacheln der Frauentoilette wanderte, bevor Auxilio und Mexiko und die UMAN und deren Autonomie genug durch die Scheiße gegangen waren, und alles vorbei war. Glanz und Gloria gehen nicht zusammen mit Klopapier und Keramikschüssel -- wie sollen wir das unseren Kindern beibringen?

Schämt sich eine Nation für die Scheiße in den Gängen der Uni oder vor der Scheiße in der Frauentoilette im vierten Stock, in deren Nähe sich die Autonomie der UNAM flüchten konnte und gegen alle Wahrscheinlichkeit überdauerte? Oder schämt sich eine Nation dafür, dass man dieses Ideele beschmutzte? Oder schämt sie sich gar nicht, sondern war es ihr einfach scheißegal? Das muss man ja nicht gleich alles beantworten können, aber könnte diese Fragen stellen und wahrscheinlich könnte man das kaum auf so eindrucksvolle Weise wie in diesem Buch.(less)

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Jul 27, 2011 Paula Bascur rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

Ésta será una historia de terror. Será una historia policíaca, un relato de serie negra y de terror. Pero no lo parecerá. No lo parecerá porque soy yo la que lo cuenta. Soy yo la que habla y por eso no lo parecerá. Pero en el fondo es la historia de un crimen atroz.

novela corta, repleta de personajes, más bien existencias, es entonces una prolongación del genio lector de Bolaño, capaz de crear dualidades carismáticas que no dejan de ser fantasías y que en esa ambivalencia tan especial entre real...more

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Sep 11, 2010 Zee rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: booksread2010, contemporary, southamerican

"This is going to be a horror story. A story of murder, detection and horror. But it won't 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 the story of a terrible crime."

And so begins the awkward, hallucinatory tale of Auxiliano Lacouture; the narrator of our story and self-proclaimed 'mother of Mexican poetry'. The story begins neither here nor there,but winds itself around people, events and fragmented memories like a kite...more "This is going to be a horror story. A story of murder, detection and horror. But it won't 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 the story of a terrible crime."

And so begins the awkward, hallucinatory tale of Auxiliano Lacouture; the narrator of our story and self-proclaimed 'mother of Mexican poetry'. The story begins neither here nor there,but winds itself around people, events and fragmented memories like a kite driven by a
wayward wind. Lacouture's erratic narrative comes to rest on odd moments between art and people as Bolano tries to express the deep, subliminal messages sent and received by poets and their poetry.

"I am the mother of Mexico's poets. I am the only one who held out in the university in 1968, when the riot police and the army came in... I stayed there with a book by Pedro Garfias."

The story itself is loosely anchored around the drastic events of 1968, when the government ordered the storming of all state Universities, including the one Lacouture attends. Suddenly Lacouture finds herself trapped alone in the lavatory on the fourth-floor of the
university, where she is to stay for 12 days without food or water.With nothing but a poetry book and her own memories, Lacouture begins to deconstruct events, recalling, rewinding and often going forward in time to piece together this unlikely 'horror story'.

Part stream-of-consciousness, part feverish prophecy; the story unfolds as a metaphor for the confusion and rage that swells in the heart of Mexican poetry. Poets dead and alive populate the narrative, adding to the confused, collective cacophany of a country that rests on political turmoil. Amongst this, Lacouture emerges from the lavatory as a heroine, and is hailed by professors and students alike as a champion of literary art. She becomes a living legend, but her solitary confinement has opened a mystical door inside her. She had become a muse, a 'Calliope', as her eyes begun to see the power of poetry beyond the page, as she sees the army of the dead marching towards the unknown.

"And I heard them sing. I hear them singing still, faintly, even now that I am no longer in the valley, a barely audible murmur, the prettiest children of Latin America, the ill-fed and the well-fed children those who had everything and those who had nothing, such a beautiful song it is... I heard them sing and I went mad.

And although the song 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.
And that song is our amulet."

The quote above being the last paragraph, neatly ties up the ideology that drives this book which was pretty sketchy to begin with. The roundabout telling of the story and it's incongruence sometimes
frustrated me. But someting inside me told me to keep reading on. Somewhere in there is a method to the madness, it glimmers through the tangle of voices the novel is composed from. I would say a re-read is in order if I am to truly understand that method.

I give this 3/5 stars. (less)

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Apr 11, 2013 Sofia Teixeira rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Nunca antes tinha pegado numa obra de Roberto Boleño até Amuleto me chegar às mãos. Certamente que há muito que andava curiosa por ler uma obra sua, principalmente depois do sucesso que foi 2666. Mesmo sendo um tipo de leitura diferente do que o que costumo ler, gostei imenso de descobrir a escrita deste autor numa história que me deu que pensar, que me fez rir e que me despertou a curiosidade para tantos autores/poetas mexicanos.

Amuleto é uma extensão de uma história presente noutra obra do aut...more

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Jun 12, 2011 Abailart rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

A wonderful long short story which captures the nature of dreams by compression, displacement of images, time slippages and identity shifts, most of all by metaphors in the broadest sense - those that clash and compound separate discourses, or confound, all disturbing historical stability. That the 'dream' expands from the tiles and watery sounds of a ladies' toilet in a university department of philosophy and literature adds via its literal banality (although the tiles are also hieroglyphs)to a...more

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Jul 18, 2010 William Herschel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own, 2010

Reading this was rather nice, you know, being able to lift the book from its resting place because it's not 900+ pages (ahem, 2666).

And that is basically it. Another beautiful character's story, Auxillo's, the Mother of Poetry, who hides in a woman's bathroom stall when the university that she does odd jobs for is invaded by armed forces in the 60's. The book is compromised of reflections of her past (and future) while staying in the restroom.

Auxillo is apparently featured in The Savage Detectiv ...more

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Sep 10, 2010 Candiss rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: die-hard Bolaño enthusiasts, patient readers

Shelves: read-2010, reviewed

I soldiered on to the end, but perhaps Roberto Bolaño (or, at least, Amulet) is not for me. I had heard many glowing things about his writing, so I had good hopes, but I just couldn't get into the story. Half-way through, finding myself a bit bored with the narrative and fatigued by the style, I suspected I was in trouble. I thought things might pick up in the second half of the book, but sadly, they did not.

Amulet is the story of a middle-aged, couch-surfing Uruguayan woman named Auxilio, who s...more I soldiered on to the end, but perhaps Roberto Bolaño (or, at least, Amulet) is not for me. I had heard many glowing things about his writing, so I had good hopes, but I just couldn't get into the story. Half-way through, finding myself a bit bored with the narrative and fatigued by the style, I suspected I was in trouble. I thought things might pick up in the second half of the book, but sadly, they did not.

Amulet is the story of a middle-aged, couch-surfing Uruguayan woman named Auxilio, who styles herself "the mother of Mexican poetry", knows and loves all the young poets (sometimes in a Biblical sense), and who is in a ladies' room at a Mexican university when the Mexican military invades the campus. She decides to dig in and hide out, as opposed to being captured and forced to leave with the faculty and staff. She spends 13 days entrenched there with water, but no food, dozing, fantasizing, reminiscing, and possibly hallucinating.

The book reads like being harangued by a chatty daydreamer who does not know how to conduct a conversation - rambling on and on, digressing again and again, jumping around in time, rehashing stories she has told everyone many times before...a filibuster narrative. It's like getting cornered by your half-senile great-Aunt for what feels like forever and feeling too guilty to cut her off, all the while dreaming of nothing but escape. I felt like a captive audience to this book, yet I felt somehow wrong about wanting to quit reading. I found myself more and more daydreaming while reading, losing my place, metaphorically nodding so the author would think I was paying polite attention.

Perhaps my head was in the wrong place for this story. I love dreamy narrative, but this was not dream-like so much as meandering. There were elements of magical realism, which I appreciated; in fact, those were my favorite parts of the book. But the over-indulged "Did I tell you about the time...." gambit and the copious name-dropping (of both real and fictional figures, very few of whom I had any mental connections for) quickly became jumbling and just plain messy. I've known several people in real life who have a very extensive social history and are always inserting into conversations things such as "One time, Harold and I went to this place..." and "Kelly told me, years ago...", and I don't know any of these people - never met a one of them - and can't keep them all straight, and there's not enough context for me to keep a place for them in my mind... Well, Auxilio went on exactly like that.

I get that she is a daydreamer. I understand that she is both poetic in nature and no longer young. I know she's in a stressful, muddling situation. But I got the distinct impression that she would be no less whimsical and disconnected and circular-thinking if she weren't stuck in a toilet stall. I'm afraid that, although I suspect Bolaño intends for me to like Auxilio, to find her kooky-charming and outsider-artsy, I frankly just wanted her to shut up for a moment or two, take a deep breath, have a little pause with her endless reflection.

And there you go: I feel guilty, like I just shushed lonely old Aunt Mabel. (less)

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About Roberto Bolaño

For most of his early adulthood, Bolaño was a vagabond, living at one time or another in Chile, Mexico, El Salvador, France and Spain.

Bolaño moved to Europe in 1977, and finally made his way to Spain, where he married and settled on the Mediterranean coast near Barcelona, working as a dishwasher, a campground custodian, bellhop and garbage collector — working during the day and writing at night.

H...more For most of his early adulthood, Bolaño was a vagabond, living at one time or another in Chile, Mexico, El Salvador, France and Spain.

Bolaño moved to Europe in 1977, and finally made his way to Spain, where he married and settled on the Mediterranean coast near Barcelona, working as a dishwasher, a campground custodian, bellhop and garbage collector — working during the day and writing at night.

He continued with poetry, before shifting to fiction in his early forties. In an interview Bolaño stated that he made this decision because he felt responsible for the future financial well-being of his family, which he knew he could never secure from the earnings of a poet. This was confirmed by Jorge Herralde, who explained that Bolaño "abandoned his parsimonious beatnik existence" because the birth of his son in 1990 made him "decide that he was responsible for his family's future and that it would be easier to earn a living by writing fiction." However, he continued to think of himself primarily as a poet, and a collection of his verse, spanning 20 years, was published in 2000 under the title The Romantic Dogs.

Regarding his native country Chile, which he visited just once after going into voluntary exile, Bolaño had conflicted feelings. He was notorious in Chile for his fierce attacks on Isabel Allende and other members of the literary establishment.

In 2003, after a long period of declining health, Bolaño died. It has been suggested that he was at one time a heroin addict and that the cause of his death was a liver illness resulting from Hepatitis C, with which he was infected as a result of sharing needles during his "mainlining" days. However, the accuracy of this has been called into question. It is true that he suffered from liver failure and was close to the top of a transplant list at the time of his death.

Bolaño was survived by his Spanish wife and their two children, whom he once called "my only motherland."

Although deep down he always felt like a poet, his reputation ultimately rests on his novels, novellas and short story collections. Although Bolaño espoused the lifestyle of a bohemian poet and literary enfant terrible for all his adult life, he only began to produce substantial works of fiction in the 1990s. He almost immediately became a highly regarded figure in Spanish and Latin American letters.

In rapid succession, he published a series of critically acclaimed works, the most important of which are the novel Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives), the novella Nocturno de Chile (By Night In Chile), and, posthumously, the novel 2666. His two collections of short stories Llamadas telefónicas and Putas asesinas were awarded literary prizes.

In 2009 a number of unpublished novels were discovered among the author's papers.(less)

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“Nothing good ever comes of love. What comes of love is always something better” — 41 people liked it

“I'll tell you, my friends: it's all in the nerves. The nerves that tense and relax as you approach the edges of companionship and love. The razor-sharp edges of companionship and love.” — 13 people liked it

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