Product Description

An American writer and his wife find a new home—and a new lease on life—in the charming sixteenth-century hill town of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

When Los Angeles novelist Tony 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. On Mexican Time 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #242659 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01-09
• Released on: 2001-01-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.com Review
In the mid-1980s, Tony Cohan and his artist wife, Masako, decided they had had enough of the hectic pace and inherent insecurities of life in Los Angeles and made tracks for the historic town of San Miguel de Allende in central Mexico. At first they rented rooms in a hotel. Then, when the hotel became less appealing, they graduated to renting an apartment. Almost inevitably, they eventually found themselves buying a 250-year-old hacienda on the verge of collapse, with wonderfully elegant Spanish colonial architecture and a garden brimming with papayas, avocados, and custard apples.

What followed was a love affair with a country and its people that has endured. On Mexican Time is a lyrical attempt to capture the Mexican magic that bewitched the two of them. Cohan introduces us to a quirky cast of Mexicans and expats, including murderers, idealists, philanderers, and writers. Spanning 15 years, the book conveys something of the curiously intangible passage of time, as we watch girls become mothers, marriages drift apart, and friends come and go. The text is rich with sensuous details, and Cohan is excellent at conveying the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of a country that he clearly adores.

On Mexican Time is much less of a glib chronicle than other books of the "charming new life in paradise" genre. Although he is not averse to the odd moment of portentousness, Cohan makes a gentle and elegant guide through the experiences of expat life in San Miguel. --Toby Green

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. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Novelist and essayist Cohan capably narrates his chronicle of life in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He and his wife, artist Masako Takahashi, first visit San Miguel to escape the rampant crime and cold capitalism flourishing in their hometown of Los Angeles in the mid-1980s. Admittedly "na?ve visitors," the two quickly fall in love with the leisurely, sensual pace of life lived "on Mexican time." Cohan, who always had an "aversion to supermarkets which bordered on the pathological," was drawn to the open air food markets and spicy cuisine of this small town in central Mexico. After returning home to their hectic L.A. lives, their longing for the peace and happiness they found in San Miguel soon drove them to sell their home and permanently relocate. As much a commentary on the transforming power of place as it is a travelog, Cohan's richly detailed memoir is recommended for all popular collections.ABeth Farrell, Portage Cty. Dist. Lib., OH
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.