The first of Bolaño’s books with a female protagonist that I have ever read. As the book advances, some of it is astonishingly beautifully written—once the facts have been patiently established, they begin to swirl into a curious, phantasmagoric portrait of adventure and one woman’s identity. ( )

La voz arrebatada de Auxilio Lacouture narra, e indaga, un crimen atroz y lejano. Auxilio, uruguaya de mediana edad, se oculta en los lavabos de mujeres durante la toma de la universidad por la policía, en México, en septiembre de 1968. Recluida allí por varios días, podrá avizorar los años ya vividos en México y los años por vivir. Rememora entonces a la poetisa Lilian Serpas, que hizo el amor con el Che, y a su infortunado hijo, a los poetas españoles León Felipe y Pedro Garfias a quienes Auxilio sirvió como doméstica voluntaria, y también aparece Arturo Belano, personaje central en Los detectives salvajes, de la que esta novela es una digresión fractal. Pero sobre todo se narra un viaje por un mundo, el Polo Norte de la memoria que se extiende por doquier.

Cum poate să scrie omul ăsta!
Senzaţia e ca şi cum te-ai arunca într-o apă curgătoare şi, în timp ce te scufunzi în lichidul rece, observi în detaliu tot ce se petrece în lumea de dedesubt. ( )

1968. Auxilio, 'moeder van de dichters' en verstopt voor de ordediensten in de toiletten op de vierde verdieping van de faculteit Letteren, overschouwt het verleden en de toekomst, zelfs tot het jaar 2666. Niet alles wat gebeurd is en gebeurd geweest zal zijn is ook werkelijk gebeurd wat de vertelling tot een soort hallucinatie maakt. Rijke bron voor een of meerdere doctoraten over Mexicaanse dichters en tweederangsschilders. En waarlijk: ik ken niets van Mexicaanse dichters en tweederangsschilders, maar ik kreeg zowaar zin er een doctoraat over te schrijven. ( )

This novella/short novel takes an incident from Bolaño's brilliant 'The Savage Detectives' and weaves a new tale from it. The incident in question concerns the narrator, Auxilio Lacouture, and the Mexican regime's violent repression of student protest in the turbulent year that was 1968. Auxilio refers to this incident, the defining moment of her life, time and again throughout the book.

Like the longer work from which it derives, 'Amulet' is set in the world of Mexico City's poetry scene. It slips between description of a number of events and a series of hallucinations. The atmosphere Bolaño creates is unnerving.

Bolaño writes fairly convincingly from a female perspective, a notoriously difficult trick for a male writer to pull off. I guess it helps that his narrator is an oddball, not a 'conventional' woman. The dream-like repetitions move the narrative along in a fevered state of tension, reflecting the unease that habitually accompanies this writer's work. And it's a pleasure to make fleeting re-acquaintance with a few of the characters from 'The Savage Detectives'. And Bolaño knew what he was doing, of course. The opening and last lines are both memorable ones.

Unless it was self-deprecating high irony, the least likeable aspect of this book was the narrator's account of Arturo Belano, the fictionalised version of our novelist who first appears in 'The Savage Detectives'. Auxilio/Bolaño paints a picture of a romantic and heroic figure, returning from his defence of Allende against Pinochet to take on the lords of Mexico City's underworld. Hmm... According to some accounts, Bolaño never even returned to Chile at that troubled time (bringing to mind the controversy over Laurie Lee and the Spanish Civil War, another prose writer who saw himself as primarily a poet). There's nothing wrong with self-mythologising but a little due modesty doesn't go amiss. ( )