Amulet is a highly charged first-person account that embodies in one woman's voice the melancholy and violent recent history of Latin America.
Auxilio Lacouture, a Uruguayan woman who moved to Mexico City in the 1960s and has spent years hanging out with the young poets in the cafes and bars, has become the "Mother of Mexican Poetry." Tall, thin, and blonde, she is famous as the sole person who resists the army's invasion of the university campus: she hides in a ladies' room for twelve days. Auxilio recalls her adventures in exile, and talks about two elderly lions of Spanish poetry as well as three remarkable women: the unhappy young philosopher Elena, the exiled Catalan painter Remedios Varo, and Lilian Serpas, a poet who once slept with Che Guevara. Auxilio also shares her love for her favorite young poet who is none other than Arturo Belano (Bolano's fictional stand-in throughout his books).
Auxilio Lacouture is trapped. For twelve days she hides alone in a lavatory on the fourth floor of the university. Staring at the floor, she begins a heartfelt and feverish tale: she is the Mother of Mexican poetry.
This highly charged first-person semi-hallucinatory novel is a potent stream of consciousness through which the poets of Mexico rage and swirl. Filled with wild, dark literary prophecies, heroic poets, mad poets, artists ‘choked by the brilliance of youth’, Auxilio’s passionate narration – both heart-breaking and lyrical – is suffused with the essence of Bolaño’s art.
