The Years with Laura Díaz

I bought this book because it was set in various parts of Mexico which I already knew and I was planning a return trip. I liked it for the Mexico references and history plus the bonus of lots of Mexico-specific vocabulary. I didn't really think the story itself was fantastic. But maybe that's due to my mediocre grasp of Spanish.

Here's what I wrote in 2008 about this read: "The Mexican Revolution. Long years of turmoil as epic changes came to this culture and government. Laura lives her life during these times, and eventually become traveling companion to Frida Kahlo and in the cirlce of Diego Rivera (pay attention, MGA, you run into them again soon in another powerful novel)."

Booklist Review:
“[Is it] possible to live the life of a dead woman exactly as she lived it, to discover the secret of her memory?” asks the narrator of The Years with Laura Diaz, Fuentes’ new novel. In this case, the dead woman is Laura Diaz, Fuentes' version of a Mexican Every Woman, and her memory is none other than the turbulent history of twentieth-century Mexico. The novel begins in 1999 when photographer Santiago Lopez-Alfaro arrives in Detroit to film a documentary about the Mexican muralists in the U.S. There he comes across the image of an unnamed woman immortalized on the mural of the famous Diego Rivera. He soon realizes that “those almost golden eyes, mestizo, between European and Mexican” belonged to his show more great-grandmother, Laura Diaz. Thereafter, the novel recounts the life of Diaz, from the settlement of her German grandparents in Mexico in the late 1800s (based on the true story of the migration of Fuentes’ European ancestors to Mexico) to her experience of the Mexican Revolution and its aftermath. In many ways, Laura Diaz is the female counterpart to Artemio Cruz, the hero of Fuentes’ 1962 novel, The Death of Artemio Cruz. If Cruz, the former revolutionary turned capitalist, symbolized for Fuentes Mexico's quest for wealth at the expense of moral values, then Diaz, the politically committed artist, stands as the pillar of integrity and hope for twentieth-century Mexico. In Laura Diaz, Fuentes has created a remarkable heroine.
(Reviewed September 1, 2000) -- Veronica Scrol show less

Horrible book. Another loser pick from Militza. This one was so bad, I couldn't finish it. About some idiot woman that has no redeeming qualities at all. She doesn't seem to have any talents for anything: hangs around artists, but doesn't really produce anything; is married to some labor leader, but she does nothing political; hangs around some philosopher types but contributes nothing; can't parent well, is not a good wife, and who knows what else. Definitely not a heroine in my book.

also a study guide to this avail on scribd

Leído

Carlos Fuentes fügt einzelne Episoden der Lebensgeschichte der Laura Díaz zu einem großen Ganzen zusammen und erzählt so die Geschichte Mexikos im 20. Jahrhundert. Ihre Familienchronik, ihre Liebhaber, ihre Bekanntschaften mit Exilanten und Künstlern und die einzelnen, schicksalhaften, scheinbar privaten Wendungen sind allesamt mit der vielfältigen Kultur und den historischen Wendepunkten Mexikos verwoben. Fuentes schafft sohin ein mexikanisches Jahrhundertwerk.

Es gelingt ihm aber nicht immer, seine Hauptfiguren ebenso facettenreich und glaubwürdig zu zeichnen. Trotz aller Bemühungen des Autors bleibt seine Laura Díaz sohin ein distanzierter Charakter, deren Wesen den Leser weniger berührt als die Rahmenhandlung.