On Mexican Time: A New Life in San Miguel

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

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.

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.


A good description of yla vida mexicanay.   August 17, 2000
T. J. Mathews (Livermore, CA USA)
31 out of 34 found this review helpful

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.


The good and bad   February 19, 2000
29 out of 32 found this review helpful

Having lived and worked in a town near San Miguel de Allende I enjoyed this book. It brought back lots of memories of the area and people. Being able to picture every city, street, and building that Cohan mentioned, since I have seen them all, helped to create wonderful imagery for me. I do think it is important to point out that San Miguel is really a tourist town. There are lost ex-pats living there and everyone speaks english and many times prefer english to espanol. Rich Texans take weekend vacations there and only the wealthy Mexicans can afford to visit a place so important in their history. (Many of my Mexican friends call it Saint Michael - because of all the Americans). In a way it is sad that Tony Cohan's book is good, because I think more people will visit San Miguel de Allende and the historic little mountain town will lose its magic. But at the same time the economy of San Miguel de Allende deeply depends on las turistas. I guess it's a Catch 22. Enjoy the book!


Sometimes Annoying, Sometimes Touching...   June 19, 2000
Dr. Michael Trend (MY MOUNTAIN HIDEOUT NEAR LAS VEGAS, NEVADA)
29 out of 37 found this review helpful

You know how these expatriate memoirs go, but to summarize:

Travel writer Tony Cohan and his artist wife have this feeling of uneasiness in the 3:00 AM of their souls that (as far as I can tell) comes from living a life--why is it always in New York City of LA?--that doesn't involve worrying about how to pay the mortage, whether one's 10-year-old car will start, or having to get to work on time Monday morning no matter what.

And author Tony Cohan soon realizes that--outside of their sealed enviroments of residence, car, and clients' offices--the surrounding society seems to taken a chaotic cast, like something out of Bladerunner.

So, the two of them did what any other couple with a six-figure bank balance would do. They rambled down to the small town of San Miguel de Allende, tucked away away in the mountains of Mexico, where they gradually felt the feelings of malaise lifting.

Naturally, the two of them found themselves spending more and more time there. (They shuttle back and forth from LA like most of us catch a crosstown bus.)

They learned a little Spanish--make that damned little. They learned a little about the culture--make that damned little as well.

One day, in a rare and curious moment of passion, they pulled $85,000 out of the bank and bought a dilapidated house that they had rehabbed until it looked kinda like their place in LA, except with chalk walls and quaint neighbors outside.

Friends visit.

Friends depart.

Once in a while, other duties beckon--like when Cohan has to fly back to the US to meet with a publisher.

Life can be tough, you know? But you just push on through, you and your lifemate...

That's the ticket....

And the love between you deepens, just like the love you have for San Migule.

Fade out.

Roll the credits.

I think the problem with the book, what really annoys the hell out of readers and reviewers, is that they can't identify with the narcisstic twit lifestyle of Tony Cohan and his wife.

What are the stakes in the narrative, except to scratch a vague itch?

At times, when the stakes DO seem to rise beyond the pursuit of self, the reading gets interesting. Most often, it's when acquaintances get sick, or when they die. (That's bound to happen when you hang around for fifteen years in a small Meixcan town in which your friends are Americans at the outset are well into middle age or beyond.)

The scenes that resonated to me most were the ones where Cohan and his wife rehabbed an old house. A couple of years ago, I re-did a bodega that rented for $100 a month in the red-light district of a border town, where I was doing some documentary work. I had some of the same cross-cultural mishaps happen, except mine reached a more dramatic crescendo when I went to holler at some spectacularly inept locals who were patching the roof. In a snit, I ran through a sliding plate glass door that my then-wife had cleaned spotlessly and replaced back in its track only moments ago.

A bit more on the positive side: Cohan's prose is competent. So, this is an OK read on an airplane.

And I think that "On Mexican Time" can serve as a starting point for the neophyte who will eventually want to learn (much) more about Mexico.


Shallow, exploitive.   April 24, 2000
29 out of 43 found this review helpful

Mr Cohan elitism and rip-off of Peter Mayle's fine love of France and his experiences there, is a palid and shallow look at a small Mexican town that deserves better. All the book is, is a thinly (and shallow)disguised look at Mr Cohan himself. And any deeper I would not wish to read. Mr Cohan displays no real knowledge of Mexico or her people, nor does he display much love for this country which he dares to try to show us. As a Mexican I am disgusted with the book. As one who visits San Miguel regularly, I am shocked with Mr Cohan's vacuous take on such a multi-layered town. To learn more about Mexico, skip this book.