The Years with Laura Diaz
A millennial novel with centennial breadth,The Years with Laura  Díazfollows 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. While Don Felipe fights  the laurel branches that continually weave their way through his delicate coffee  plants, Laura watches as her gifted unmarried aunts are consumed by the forced  idleness of their kind: Hilda, who plays Chopin to empty rooms, and Virginia,  whose love poems never reach a suitor.In Veracruz, Laura will find a focus for her own youthful longing, her  half-brother Santiago, whose clandestine aid to the anarchist-syndicalists leads  to his execution. After his death, she is expected to follow the girlish  ambitions of her friends: taking dancing lessons and learning to listen to men.  Yet in honor of her half-brother's memory, 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 concludes 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.The poor and downtrodden, by contrast, are always there. Laura's husband takes  her to the barrios of Mexico City to dissuade her from assuming anything but a  housewife's role in political affairs. Later, a lover leads her through a  nocturnal wasteland, a city of the poor, showing her deformed beggars, and  stunted, starving children:Laura, did your husband show you this, or did he only show you the  pretty side of poverty, the workers with their cheap shirts, the whores with  their powder, the organ grinders and locksmiths, the tamale sellers and the  saddlers? Is that his working class? Do you want to rebel against your husband?  Hate him because he didn't give you a chance to do something for others, treated  you with contempt?Laura decides that although she can't save everyone, she can save herself  through work. And the first work she undertakes--wonderfully and bizarrely--is  as a traveling companion to Frida Kahlo.Given the time span and the gravity of occurrences this epic covers, it is no  surprise that this character herself often seems to stand still while events and  people move around her. Because of this, perhaps,The Years with Laura  Díazis 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 hundred pages.--Regina Marler--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.