Customer Reviews

Travel Advisory: Stories of Mexico

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(3)

 

 

I read Travel Advisory this past weekend and loved it. It is a compelling collection of short stories about people from all walks of life in Mexico... and the Americans who visit. The characters are dark and vivid in a way that kept me invested in their humanity, even when the brutality of their actions or circumstances made me want to shut them out.

The tone of the storytelling reminded me of Paul Bowles... and yet the stories have a further compassion for what becomes of people in the dehumanizing world of polarized wealth & poverty... without being at all preachy or judgemental.

Bravo.

David Lida's stories glow with an undertone of reality that may shock some people, offend others, but paints a true picture of a small slice of Mexico. The characters he features are universal: as some commenters noted, they could be found anywhere in the world. Although fiction, these characters and the scenes in which they act are undoubtedly drawn from real life, from the years that Lida has spent in Mexico. He portrays the dark side of Mexico that the travel agencies and tourist businesses don't want you to know about, but is all too real for those who live there day in and day out.

The characters are well defined, and the settings are described in the kind of vivid detail that comes only from personal experience. I couldn't put the book down until I finished it. If you're one of those who is fascinated by Mexico and you don't require that every story you read have a happily-ever-after ending, you'll probably appreciate this glipmse of another Mexico that many of us never see.

Lida plays the gringo-mexicano dynamic like a cello. Sexual victimization comes across as a major theme, perhaps serving as a two-way metaphor for US-Mexico relations and for class relations within Mexican society. Although we sometimes sense this dynamic in inter-American news stories, Lida's fiction brings it into high relief. Americans who have traveled in Mexico will squirm as they see themselves in some of these stories, and as they recognize the brutalities of Mexican life that ardent Mexicophiles like to sweep under the bed. Hard to pick a favorite among the 10 stories, but I loved "The Recruiting Officer" and "Taxi".

I have to disagree with the previous reviewer who dimisses Latin American magic realism as "cutesy." And the first story in TRAVEL ADVISORY, "Bewitched," contains a strong dose of magic realism in its finale.

In David Lida's stories things happen. These are not tame stories to read in a waiting room. They are bold and compelling, a fearless journey into the lives of complex characters. The writing is wonderful both in it's prose and in it's story telling. These stories are a pleasure not because they are pleasant, but because they lead you along dangerous paths to important places of the heart. Anyone who thinks these stories are Mexico bashing doesn't understand their intent. They're not about Mexico; they're about you and me.

This is Mexico today, not yesteryear. David Lida has an uncanny ability to get into the heads of a variety of flawed, very human characters. If you want Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, you'll find Travel Advisory disturbing and disorienting. OTOH if you watch the Independent Film Channel, like Jim Jarmusch or old film noir, you'll find it gripping, very real and hard to put down. I liked it and found it very centered on the troubled Mexico of the turn of the millenium. But "heartwarming" or "feel-good" it's not. It ain't hokey or sappy either. The characters are victims, predators, losers and some are just not very nice, but all are very real. Unlike the characters, the style is flawless.

David Lida has crawled deep inside the collective conscious of modern Mexico and America, turned on a glaring flood light and revealed to all the ugly side of both cultures. Having lived in Mexico City for 7 years, I found myself predicting the disturbing curves of some of Mr. Lida's stories.

His stories are an affront to the tequila doused illusions of so many middle aged American expats living in Gringo enclaves within Mexico. I applaud him for this brave reversal of the "happy go lucky" stereotypes of Mexico, so often conjured up in the writings of foreigners.

Mexico is a dark, mysterious and deeply complex culture incapable of stereotyping. Mr. Lida understands this by neither mocking Mexico nor glorifying it. Mexicans have lived under an oppressive but flexible rule for 700 years, first at the hands of Aztec royalty, later the Spaniards and now the Meztizo elite. 700 years has bred a level of cynicism that both handicaps Mexicans and serves as a source of comic relief. David Lida's book understands the cynic behind every Mexican smile.

If you really want a taste of Modern Mexico, read this book.

Although I am far from an expert on the country, I am lucky to travel there frequently, and I have many friends there both Mexican and expatriate. Based on my experiences, I find the characters in these stories incredibly true, so much that they are like composites of people I know. The situations the author describes have often been the stuff of the local Urban Legends, or of many personal anecdotes, but, for the first time, I feel like I am able to get inside the skins of these characters, (an admittedly uncomfortable feeling in a couple of instances). In fact, this book transported me to Mexico so effectively, that it was a shock to look up from the page and realize that I was sitting at home. Yes, this work does treat issues of the gritty realities of the country. But, "experiencing" this first-hand on the page does not at all impact my deep love of the country...nor my enjoyment of these extremely well-crafted stories. I only hope we don't have to wait too long to see more of the same from Mr. Lida

This collection of short stories by David Lida is outstanding. His keen observations about the complicated dynamics between Mexicans and foreigners in Mexico make this one of the best fiction books I have read about Mexico. The writing is incisive and mercifully free of the cutesy "magical realism" fakery that afflicts many books about Latin America. Lida has a deep sense of the Mexican culture and psyche, the stories are original and surprising and the atmosphere is rich and evocative. Mexico is as much a character in these stories as their human protagonists, and both are sharply and wisely drawn. Travel Advisory is a harrowing, powerful book. I strongly recommend it to anybody who appreciates good stories, very well told.

This is one of the best books I've read in years. David Lida writes in a prose style that avoids cheap fuzzy adjectives to present in keenly-observed prose the innermost thoughts and feelings of a cross-section of people in contemporary Mexico: predatory taxi drivers, boozy Texans down for the weekend, Mexico City professionals, their families and servants, an alcoholic photographer, the Jewish singles scene in Mexico City, a homeless boy. Most of the stories present a side of Mexico that we in the US rarely see.

These are very very dark stories...people are raped, robbed, exploited. But the stories are also funny by turn. It's a tone that is not that common, and probably not to some people's tastes, but I found it quite satisfying.

Lida understands Mexican sensibilities and those of Americans better than most. He deftly shows the clashes that sometimes take place. In one story, an American woman travel writer has come to a sleepy Mexican town to do a piece. Lida describes the gulf between US and Mexican stardards of feminine beauty thusly:

"In Philadelphia, where Rhoda lived, men tended to eye her 42-year old body with what they considered cold objectivity. They regarded her as over the hill, accustomed from TV commercials and magazine spreads to surgically enhanced prototypes half her age....She was on the road much of the year, so couldn't keep up a perpetual (exercise) schedule...On the other hand Eusebio (the Mexican hotel keeper) found her adorable, if lamentably lean for a woman her age (which he figured at about thirty-five.)"

If you don't mind reading dark disturbing fiction, I think you will find this collection richly rewarding.

Really glad to have chanced upon this last week at a local bookstore. Hadn't seen a single review, didn't even know it existed, but David and I were friendly acquaintenances in New York in the mid-1970s when we were both in our early 20s, Strand Bookstore and Bleecker Street Cinema days.

Well, this is a really good collection of stories. I was shocked at how dark some of them get, but they had an emotional reality to them, so none of the dark material felt gratuitous, or gave me the sense of an author sadistically torturing his characters. And "Shuttered" is one of the saddest, most moving evocations of terminal alcoholism I've come across.

This is the first contemporary book I've read that brought back to mind some of what I like best about Paul Bowles. I'll be passing this volume around, and keeping an eye out for more of David's work.