First Impression Friday will be a meme where you talk about a book that you JUST STARTED! Maybe you’re only a chapter or two in, maybe a little farther. Based on this sampling of your current read, give a few impressions and predict what you’ll think by the end.

Synopsis:

Written by José Mármol while in exile, Amalia was conceived to protest the cut-throat dictatorship of Juan Migheul de Rosas during the tumultuous years of post-independence Argentina and to provide a picture of the political events during his regime. A year after its publication in 1851, Rosa fell from power, and Amalia became Argentina’s national novel. Though its classic and obligatory status as required reading in Argentina’s schools has clouded its sparkle, it is above all a brilliant and passionate book whose popularity stemmed from the love story that fuels its plot.

Mármol recounts the story of Eduardo and Amalia, who fall in love while Eduardo convalesces from a death-squad attack in Amalia’s home. At once a detailed picture of life under a dictatorship and a tragic love story between a provincial girl and a young man from Buenos Aires, Amalia displays Mármol’s patience with historical detail and his flair for dialogue and description and remains an enduring work of literature in Latin American and the world.

Happy weekend everyone! I hope you were all able to end the workweek on a high note. I hope you were all able to accomplish all the tasks you set at the start of the week. Personally, it was a busier week at the office. I recently assumed a new role and it is a 180-degree turn from my previous role. Still, I am looking forward to learning new things. Anyway, I capped the workweek watching Hamilton, a musical based on the life of Alexander Hamilton, the United States’ first Secretary of Treasury. It was a delightful experience, as musicals often are. The ensemble was splendid; we were regaled by the presence of Rachel Ann Go who played Eliza Schuyler Hamilton. The visuals were not as dynamic as The Lion King or The Phantom of the Opera but it was still a magnificent play.

Before I can fully enjoy the weekend, I will be sharing a fresh First Impression Friday, the first for the month of October. How time flies. As the year approaches its inevitable close, I am hoping that your hard work gets repaid before we turn in a new year. More importantly, I hope everyone is doing well, in body, mind, and spirit. For October, I will be continuing a literary journey I commenced during the first half of September. It has been two years since I hosted Latin American Literature Month. Now, I am back and looking forward to an even more exciting journey although I am bummed that I will be cutting it short as I will be focusing on books in my reading challenges for the rest of the year. Nevertheless, I am excited to go back to a place that amazed me.

My foray into Latin American literature has brought me to Argentina, with José Mármol’s Amalia. It was during the height of the pandemic that I first encountered the Argentine writer; unfortunately, my foray into Argentine literature is scant. Curious about who Mármol was and what his book had to offer, I obtained a copy of the book notwithstanding my lack of knowledge about the author and his book. Excited to read what the book has in store – it seems like a very important literary work – I made it part of my 2023 Top 23 Reading List, one of the reading challenges I need to finish before the year ends.

Written by Mármol while in exile, the novel was initially published in 1851 in Montevideo, Uruguay. It was also published in serial form, thus, accounting for the sections that comprised the book; I am currently in the third part of the book. Set in post-colonial Buenos Aires, the first part of the book laid out the groundwork for the rest of the novel; at least that was how I see it. We meet Juan Manuel de Rosas, an army officer and caudillo who ruled Buenos Aires Province and briefly the Argentine Confederation. Rosas was one of a long list of army officers who seized control of Argentina over the years, among them General Juan Perón. The first part also gave insights into Rosas’ vision of Argentina. He was cunning, to say the least. Toward the end of the first part, the titular Amalia was slowly introduced.

It was in the second part that we read more about Amalia. However, she remained at the peripheries as looming above the narrative were Daniel Bello, Amalia’s cousin, and his friend Eduardo. They were both dissidents whose political ideologies careened toward Unitarianism; in contrast, Rosas was a Federalist. The novel’s setting was one of the critical junctures in Argentina’s modern history as Federalists and Unitarians butt heads and wrest control. Because of his political leanings, Eduardo was attacked by Federalists. His friend came to the rescue and helped him go incognito. It was in the house of the widowed Amalia that Eduardo found safety. I guess it comes as a no-brainer that the novel will develop into a romance story. Proximity always does its magic.

While a romance story develops, the political tensions escalate. Daniel becomes more embroiled in the political and social developments surrounding him. The Federalists and their ilk bask in balls and social gatherings; it was, somehow, reminiscent of the New York City balls described by Edith Wharton in her novels. These social gatherings subtly reverberated with the undercurrents of Argentinian political and social tensions albeit the elitists tend to be oblivious to these. Daniel and Amalia, however, were not well aware of these. What was lacking, however, was that the depiction was limited to Buenos Aires high society. The representation of the other Argentine provinces was rather lacking.

I can almost foresee Daniel steering the narrative. It is not also difficult to see Amalia eventually developing into an allegory of Argentina. I am midway through the story and there is still quite a lot to unpack. This makes me look forward to how the novel will develop. Interestingly, because of its political overtones and its covert commentary of the Rosas dictatorship, many literary pundits consider Amalia, along with Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s Facundo, as the precursor to what would eventually develop as the dictator novel, a subgenre of Latin American literature; I first came across this in 2021 with Arturo Roa Bastos’ I The Supreme.

Again, there are a lot of things to look forward to in the story. How about you fellow reader? What book or books are you taking with you for the weekend? I hope you get to enjoy them. Again, happy weekend everyone!