The Years with Laura Diaz
by Carlos Fuentes

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Book Reviews of The Years with Laura Diaz

Book Review: I Expected A 5 Star Read & Was Disappointed.
Summary: 3 Stars

Logically, history is portrayed through the eyes, experiences and ideology of Carlos Fuentes. He incorporates his views on the Mexican Revolution, socialism, Mexico's various workers' and labor movements, the Spanish Civil War, the Holocaust, McCarthyism and other important events which took place during the last century.

Santiago Lopez-Alfaro, a young Mexican filmmaker, is in Detroit to make a documentary about Mexican muralists and their work in the US. He also wants to capture the decay of a great city, "the first capital of the automobile, no less, the place where Henry Ford inaugurated mass production of the machine that governs our lives more than any government." He goes on to narrate, "I wanted to photograph the ruin of a great industrial center as a worthy epitaph for our terrible twentieth century." While Santiago is absorbed, studying the Diego Rivera mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts, he recognizes a familiar face - that of his own, spirited great great-grandmother, Laura Diaz. He proceeds to investigate, chronicle and relive her story, through various personal tragedies, her development into a great artist, and several marriages and love affairs. Against this fictional backdrop, Fuentes juxtaposes important historical events. And Laura Diaz seems to always be at the center of everything. She's everywhere - a veritable witness to history, reminiscent of Woody Allen's Zelig. And 'History' is as much a protagonist in this novel as Sra. Diaz. Fuentes' narrative, as usual, is driven by the ideas his characters represent. He sacrifices their natural development, frequently, to make his political and historical points. Indeed, the documentation of political upheavals, the rise and fall of various Mexican governments, and the lack of social and economic reforms are a constant here. The focis on the political and philosophical interests of the characters, with long sections of debate, makes for some dry reading at times, and certainly hampers the narrative's flow.

Laura Diaz was born in 1898 and comes of age during her country's revolution, in which her beloved brother, Santiago, was killed. She marries a prominent union leader, but when she becomes restless after nine years and two sons, her husband advises her to focus on the home and children, rather than help him with the Worker's movement. She finds temporary solace in an affair, becomes part of a bohemian circle and, after a year, finds an interesting job with Diego Rivera, an acquaintance. She decides the only way to save herself from the passive, boring life of forced idleness is through work. Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Laura travel to Detroit, where the great master is to create a mural. The continuing epic of Laura's life, loves, adventures is fascinating. There are colorful stories within stories, but Laura is essentially pulled along by the force of history.

I was disappiointed with "The Years With Laura Diaz." Carlos Fuentes is a favorite author, and I have read his work in Spanish. I was expecting another masterpiece and this does not measure up to his usual standard. It is not an easy book to read. The information included is interesting, but there's an overabundance of it, to the detriment of the characters' development. Our heroine, appears to be little more than an observer, a front for Fuente's portrait of a century. The book is also very long. Although I usually enjoy long novels, especially when the prose flows, I felt like I was actually on a century-long journey and couldn't wait for the conclusion - always a bad sign. For all it's epic quality,"The Years With Laura Diaz" left me with an empty feeling. Something crucial was missing. Perhaps I missed relating to three-dimensional characters.

Carlos Fuentes, probably Mexico's greatest living writer, is the author of more than twenty books and has received many awards for his accomplishments as a novelist, essayist, and commentator, among them the Cervantes Prize in 1987.
JANA

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