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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 863.64
EAN: 9780374293413
ISBN: 0374293414
Label: Farrar Straus Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar Straus Giroux
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 516
Publication Date: 2000-10
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
Sales Rank: 1444840
Studio: Farrar Straus Giroux
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
In this radiant hope-filled new novel, Carlos Fuentes gives us a richly painted portrait of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of Laura Díaz -- a woman who becomes as much a part of our history as of the Mexican history she observes and helps to create. Filled with brilliantly colored scenes and heartbreaking dramas, the epic story of The Years with Laura Díaz is also a novel of subtle and penetrating psychological insight.
As in Fuentes's masterpiece The Death of Artemio Cruz, the action begins in the state of Veracruz and then moves to Mexico City, tracing a migration during the Revolution and, its aftermath that is an important element in Laura Díaz's life as well as in Mexico's history. This extraordinary young woman, born in 1898, grows into a devoted wife and mother, becomes the lover of great men , and, before her death in 1972, is celebrated as a politically committed artist on whom none of the poignant paradoxes of Mexican life been lost. Significantly, her life story comes to us thanks to her Chicano great-grandson, inheritor of both her gifts and her paradoxes: the novel opens in Detroit and closes in Los Angeles with him.
Laura Díaz is a complicated and alluring heroine whose brave honesty and good heart prevail despite her losing a brother and a grandson to the darkest forces of Mexico's turbulent, corrupt politics, and a son to the ravages of a disease that consumes him before his greatness can be fulfilled. Yet in the end she is a happy woman, despite the tragedy and loss, for she has borne witness to and helped to affect her country's life, and she has loved and understood with unflinching honesty.
In this most important novel in decades, Carlos Fuentes places the complex world of the twentieth century firmly in the hands of a heroine who is sure to become a lasting emblem of Mexico's -- and our -- recent past.
Amazon.com Review:
A millennial novel with centennial breadth, The Years with Laura Díaz 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. 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 Díaz 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 hundred pages. --Regina Marler
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Carlos Fuentes is an amazing writer. He writes in a beautiful, poetic style. As a narrator, he notices even the minute details and brings them to life with his writing. The problem for me is that with all this attention to detail and poetry, the story seems to get lost. I would have liked the plot to move more quickly. Mr. Fuentes does not seem to be in any hurry to tell the story or stay on track with the plot. A scene my divert into a long, lovely description of nothing much, and the reader ... Read More
Rating:  -
Like Carlos Fuentes' masterpiece, "The Death of Artemio Cruz," "The Years With Laura Diaz" traces a migration from the state of Vera Cruz to Mexico City, during and after the Mexican Revolution. Here, however, the protagonist is not at all similar to the jaded revolutionary, Artemio Cruz, (who makes a cameo appearance in the novel). She is Laura Cruz, an artist and photographer, a woman of integrity, as well as a wife, mother and lover. Strong and vibrant, she manages to circumvent the Latin machismo ... Read More
Rating:  -
Carlos Fuentes true epic surrendered me to tears...Laura Diaz whether a fictional character of Frida Kahlo's assistant, brought me an Argentine born individual to great emotional depts...It is a lyrical novel, which tells truths beyond truths...Carlos Fuentes writes and depicts all of his characters with great intellect, knowledge of the times, and incredible perspective...Was totally aghast at the comment by one of our reviewers that stated that this book was not historically correct and that Carlos ... Read More
Rating: -
This is a novel of great depth, written by a man who has lived his life observing, thinking, asking questions, considering and writing. His great talent lies in speaking for many: for fathers, mothers, sons, lovers, passionate revolutionaries and for each of us.
The Years With Laura Diaz, is as great a mural and testament, and as real and colorful as the Diego Rivera mural that graces its cover. Just as the great mural tells the history and stories of a people, so this magnificently written ... Read More
Rating: -
Carlos Fuentes takes us on a sweeping journey of the 20th century as he reveals the history, culture, and political life of Mexico and the world. Fuentes draws on his own family history to weave a tale of love and tragedy and of extraordinary people whose lives and work influenced their times. Laura Diaz, the heroine both normal and unusual in her roles as wife and mother--lover and artist, waltzes through the years with grace and vitality. Her honesty and common sense approach to life make her an ... Read More
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