On Mexican Time: A New Life in San Miguel [Hardcover]

Tony Cohan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 11, 2000

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 San Miguel de Allende. On Mexican Time is Cohan's passionate, evocatively written memoir of how he and his wife found a new home and a new lease on life--in this charming sixteenth-century hill town.

In an alternately humorous and poignant narrative, Cohan recounts how they 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. From peso devaluations and water shortages to the romantic entanglements of their handyman and the local legend of a man who was "killed twice," On Mexican Time captures the indelible characters, little tragedies, and curious incidents of life in a distinctive Mexican town. At the same time it enfolds readers in the delights of one of the world's most desirable travel destinations.

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.

Editorial Reviews

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Broadway (January 11, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767903188
• ISBN-13: 978-0767903189
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (73 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,372,514 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good description of la vida mexicana., August 16, 2000

By 

T. J. Mathews (Livermore, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: On Mexican Time: A New Life in San Miguel (Hardcover)

All in all, "On Mexican Time" is a pretty good read if you want to find out a little about living in Mexico and the people (both natives and imports) that you will encounter there.

In their fifteen years in San Miguel de Allende Tony and Masako gain a pretty good appreciation for the Mexican way of life. I'm not saying they adopted that way of life because, from beginning to end, they both remained very much norteamericanos (Spanish PC for gringo). I, too, have lived in Mexico and I believe that those of us born north of the border will never fully understand all the elements that make up the Mexican psyche, and visa versa. Who we are, as a culture, is a concatenation of centuries of historical, theological and sociological factors. It is unlikely that any of us can fully understand why another culture acts the way it does.

Nevertheless, Cohan aptly portrays the `sabor' of `la vida mexicana'. His descriptions of the joys and sorrows of the Mexican nationals and the quirky behavior of the expatriates bring clearly to mind many people I have known. While I haven't been to San Miguel de Allende his description of the city; its streets, shops, festivals and homes, is a very accurate portrayal of many other cities in Mexico.

On the down side, he could have done with a lot less about all their shopping. If I read the words `plaid bolsa' one more time it will be too many. While some description of the differences between our two cultures is in order, I feel like I've just read his entire grocery list for the past 15 years.

42 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The best book I have read in years, January 30, 2000

By 

dan mouer "Dan" (Richmond, Va.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On Mexican Time: A New Life in San Miguel (Hardcover)

Back in the mid 1980s, about the time Tony Cohan and his wife discovered San Miguel de Allende, my wife and I spent six weeks driving through Mexico, becoming enthralled with this land and it's cultures. Since then we have often thought of uprooting and heading south of the border.

Our trip didn't take us to San Miguel, though we spent lot of time in nearby Guanajuato and Queretero and other cities of the central highlands. It has never been hard for me to summon an imaginary San Miguel. So when I saw this book I snatched it up. The cover art looks like so many of my photographs from Mexico...

...And I was sucked into Tony Cohan's fabulous writing. I finished the book in three evenings, while nonetheless feeling as though I were languishing in the "sabor" of every paragraph. Cohan's book is not an artsy-fartsy travelogue about San Miguel de Allende. It is a wonderful journal of a life he and his wife have undertaken together.

While there is little doubt that the sounds, smells, flavors of classic Mexico richly permeate every page of this book, it is true, too, that the book could have been about a small town in Piedmont Virginia, or the south of France, or anywhere that the frantic and grasping and ultra-"productive" life has not yet conquered all.

This book is truly inspriring, and beautifully written. It is just what I needed to remind me to pay attention to life all around me, to love and sensation and contemplation and cockroaches and scorpions and dying vines...

Thanks, Mr. Cohan, for letting us into your sojourn. Don't worry...I won't run to St.Miguel and accelerate the gentrification. Instead, I'll look around my home and my yard and my neighbohood and be greatful for my own San Miguel...and for your fine book.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, August 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: On Mexican Time: A New Life in San Miguel (Hardcover)

Being a regular visitor to San Miguel I was delighted to see that it was the subject of a new book. I found it entertaining and generally consistent with my impression of the town and the kind of people an expatriate or traveler would meet there. The real joy of the town to me is in its eccentricities and beauty, and both of these were captured. Unlike some other reviewers I don't think it should be interpreted as a critique of Mexico and Mexicans but rather a loving memoir of someone who established a lifestyle in a wonderfully different culture.

By the way, Tony Cohan and his wife Misako collaborated on another book, Mexicolor, which is a beautiful photographic study of Mexican design and folk art. Many of the pictures are from San Miguel.