A review by lee_foust
Amulet by Roberto Bolaño

5.0

This is another lovely, unique, and moving novel by Bolano. It acts as a companion piece, in a way, to The Savage Detectives--much as Distant Star takes up a character from Nazi Literature in the Americas and expands their story into a full short novel. Since The Savage Detectives is one of my favorite novels, of course I loved this one as well, with its vivid depiction of the literary and artistic avant-garde of Mexico and South America of the generation just previous to my own. I love the universality of the experiences of the last century's Bohemians, from Murger's famous sketches of those garret-dwelling Parisian artists of the 1880s to Rent's updating of the Opera inspired by Murger's book for New York City in the 1990s, the Futurist, Dada, surrealist, Beatnik, and punk undergrounds have all persisted in creating an alternative tradition of art, poverty, subversion, and often travel and escape in a brotherhood of resistance and exploration. Without Bolano's work I never would have known about the South and Central American version of Bohemia in the 1960s and '70s. This novel, even more pointedly than Detectives conveys the portrait and meaning of the avant-garde, but it's all the better if you've already read that long catalogue of Bohemian experience and artistic struggle against political and capitalist repression, which would do away with art and poetry if it could.