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Author: Tony Cohan
When Los Angeles novelist Cohan and his artist wife,
Masako, visited central Mexico one winter they fell
under the spell of a place where the pace of life is
leisurely, the cobblestone streets and sun-splashed
plazas are enchanting, and the sights and sounds of
daily fiestas fill the air. Awakened to needs they didn’t
know they had, they returned to California, sold their
house and cast off for a new life in San Miguel de Allende.
This is Cohan's evocatively written memoir of how he
and his wife absorb the town's sensual ambiance, eventually
find and refurbish a crumbling 250-year-old house, and
become entwined in the endless drama of Mexican life.
Brimming with mystery, joy, and hilarity, On
Mexican Time is a stirring, seductive celebration
of another way of life—a tale of Americans who,
finding a home in Mexico, find themselves anew.
From Publishers Weekly
In 1985, novelist and travel writer Cohan (Canary; Secular and Sacred)
and his wife, Masako, traveled on a whim to the colorful Mexican town
of San Miguel de Allende, where fireworks sputter from wooden towers on
feast days, "mariachi singers' plangent howls" season the air, "cats
roam the rooftops unimpeded" and "history, religion and ceremony
soften the effects of change." Lured back for repeated visits, the
Cohans finally made their home there. Casual yet studied in tone, this
ode to Cohan's adopted town and nation devotes much space to San Miguel's
legends, ancient and modern. The local nunnery's founder, who turned worms
into butterflies, may be more fiction than fact. Cohan's acquaintance
Ren, though, is real enough: the story of the murder that the locals believe
he committed dominates a disturbing chapter called "The Man Who Was
Killed Twice." Hospitality vies with inefficiency to make Cohan's
Mexico a place of surprising ease and random hazards: "Mexican buses
are reliable, cheap, and safe," but Mexican highway patrolmen demand
bribes or worse; a friend of Cohan's dies when a hospital can't get her
blood type. The Mexican day seems to last longer, and "nothing happens
between two and four." Cohan also presents less serious downsides
to his calmer Mexican lifestyle, explaining why it took him so long to
get a verandah built on his 250-year-old house. The last few years have
seen San Miguel become a destination for hip tourists: Cohan's pleasant
account of its former obscurity may send his fans to further crowd its
streets.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier
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$14.95 (softcover)
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