From Amazon.co.uk
A millennial novel with centennial breadth,
The Years with Laura Diaz follows one woman through the 20th century in Mexico, witnessing its political upheavals, technological advances and bitterly uneven social and artistic progress. Born on her grandfather Don Felipe's coffee plantation at Catemaco in 1898, Laura knows both the privilege of wealth and its limitations. Her parents, Leticia and Fernando, live apart, prudently waiting until Fernando can support his family in the larger town of Veracruz.
In Veracruz, Laura finds a focus for her own youthful longing after the death of her half-brother Santiago, whose clandestine aid to the anarchist-syndicalists led to his execution. She embraces the revolution, and, hoping to avoid the fate of her virgin aunts, marries a solemn, dark-skinned, working-class hero. "The active life was preferable", Laura concluded at the ripe age of 22. For a woman, inevitably, this means "a life committed to another life". A daughter, a wife and then a mother, Laura is more or less dragged along by history. Eventually she must sacrifice not only Santiago but her own son and grandson to the violent game of musical chairs that is Mexican political life. Perhaps because of the almost laughable instability of power in Mexico, Fuentes is compelled to devote much of his narrative energy to explaining the rapid changes of guard--presidential assassinations succeeded by coups followed by questionable elections.
Given the time span and the gravity of occurrences this epic covers, it is no surprise that the character of Laura often seems to stand still while events and people move around her. Because of this, perhaps, The Years with Laura Diaz is not the clearest articulation of Fuentes's historical vision, nor his most moving work. Its emotional power is cumulative, however, and few readers will be able to put the novel down after the first 100 pages. --Regina Marler
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
In a masterwork imbued with historical anecdotes, mystical imagery and revelations about human existence, Fuentes (The Death of Artemio Cruz) relates the story of 20th-century Mexico through the fictional biography of Laura D!az. Narrated by Laura's great-grandson, a photographer and documentary filmmaker, the central thread is straightforward: Laura grows from an unusually observant child into an attractive and passionate young woman, survives numerous revolutions and world wars, several lovers and one husband. The catalyst that keeps this chronicle engaging is Laura's desire to steer the course of her life above and beyond the political currents surging through Mexican society. Much of her life revolves around her rising and falling romances: with a Casanova who vanishes when Laura gets too close to him, a Communist whose search for his missing wife precludes their relationship and a screenwriter who is slowly dying of emphysema. She eventually marries Juan Francisco, an activist whose political passion initially attracts Laura, but ultimately disturbs and alienates her. The union produces two sons. In her later years, inspired by close acquaintances with the artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Laura becomes a photographer (she photographs Kahlo's body while it is being cremated) and achieves renown almost instantly. While in other books Fuentes's characteristic riffs and dizzying, cascading sentences were intended as potential expansions of the novel, this time these gestures are used for the deepening development of the content of the book rather than of its form. Fuentes's emotional commitment to his subject shows in the lucidity of the book's underlying intellectual dialoguesDthe opposition of communism and fascism, the corrosion of individual identities by historical processesDwhich Fuentes is able to animate with a learned lyricism that should make this volume one of his most admired and memorable. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
