By Carole Reedy

We often hear it said that a movie was good, but the book was better, the film version seldom exceeding or even equaling a book’s impact on us. Here I propose a few exceptions to the rule. Each of the books below depicts life in Mexico; each was written by an established literary author and has been carefully crafted into an entertaining movie that also illuminates the author’s original purpose.

Prayers for the Stolen, by Jennifer Clement (2020)
Film: Prayers for the Stolen (2021, written and directed by Tatiana Huezo)

Jennifer Clement is a name every reader of Mexican literature should know. Former President of PEN Mexico, as well as the first and only woman President of PEN International, Clement continues to investigate and dissect the culture, problems, history, and joys of this land, one of the most culturally diverse and mysterious, and yet friendliest, countries in the world.

At the same time, Clement is a woman of the world who has experienced life on both sides of the border. Clement’s themes are diverse, perhaps due to the adventurous and culturally rich life she leads. Her books are always recommended in this column, and she is a highly regarded citizen of CDMX.

Clement’s newest book, The Promised Party: Kahlo, Basquiat, and Me, is hot off the press (May 2024). It is her own story of her rebellious childhood (the only girl to get booted out of Girl Guides!) in Mexico City to her New York adventures with famous artists. Her antics take you to all the nooks and crannies of Mexico City and New York: a wonderful guide and history of these two preeminent cities wrapped up in a cleverly crafted memoir.

Prayers for the Stolen takes us from the remote hills of the state of Guerrero to the ritzy coast of Acapulco and ends in the magical megalopolis of Mexico City. It’s about a life lived under the shadow of the narcotraficantes that dominate and ruin the future of women they kidnap even if the girls are lucky enough to escape.

Clement’s depiction of and empathy with the seemingly hopeless situation are genuine. She has visited these women in Mexico City’s worst prison to hear the stories of the narco presence in their communities: the fear if they stay or the equally dangerous prospect of running away, sometimes only to an equal or even worse fate. Clement’s style is reminiscent of that of Truman Capote or Tom Wolfe, pioneers of a “new journalism” in which the author writes from the inside out instead of viewing the subject from afar. Her Widow Basquiat: A Love Affair (the 2014 “prequel” to The Promised Party) is a fine example of this.

The movie version of Prayers for The Stolen (Noche del Fuego) can be seen on Netflix. It has received more than 20 international awards: Cannes Film Festival, Un Certain Regard, Honorific Mention; Best Director, Best Picture, Athens Film Festival; Best director, Stockholm International; Best Mexican Feature, Guanajuato Film Festival.

Battles in the Desert, by José Emilio Pacheco (1981)
Film: Mariana, Mariana (1987, written by Pacheco and Vicente Leñero, directed by Alberto Isaac)

Among my favorite Mexican stories is this novella written 43 years ago by one of the nation’s most treasured writers. The book is to Mexican culture what J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (1951) or Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) is to American life. New York Times book critic Molly Young perhaps said it best: “How can such a tiny novella contain so many lessons on perception?”

The novel is set in 1948 in the now trendy Mexico City neighborhood of La Roma, Pacheco’s childhood home. Through the eyes of a young boy named Carlos, we experience a changing city, moving from the traditional values of his family to a global modernization of the culture and world around him.

The award-winning movie version, Mariana, Mariana, was filmed in part in La Roma. A commenter on MUBI, a site that specializes in art films, noted that “Literary films are difficult, but Isaac nails this one, and doesn’t hesitate to add some extra flourishes: Freudian psychotherapy…; the growth of the city and the demolition of the old Roma Norte; the 1985 earthquake; gringo invasion; the senescence of the Revolutionary state and its descent into dirty politics, embezzlement, and inequity.” Mariana, Mariana is available for viewing on Amazon Prime.

Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel (1989)
Film: Like Water for Chocolate (1992, written by Esquivel, directed by Alfonso Arau)

This is one title that probably came to fame first as a movie and afterwards as a popular novel, despite the book’s being published a couple of years before the film was made. The film proved to be a box office hit. Years ago, I was advised by my favorite Spanish teacher that my spoken Spanish would never improve without writing and reading. One of the first novels she assigned me to read in Spanish was Like Water for Chocolate.

Most dominant and significant in the learning process was my introduction to the subjective (not a tense, but a mood) in Spanish. Shadows of the book still cloud my mind when reading or speaking the subjunctive. I also recommend Leonora by Elena Poniatowska (2015) as a good tool for Spanish students. This novelization of the fascinating life of Leonara Carrington is unequaled and will compel you to master the Spanish.

The book and movie style of Like Water for Chocolate is magical realism in a nation at the beginning of the 20th century, a time of turmoil. Tradition and the family figure predominately, as does the Mexican Revolution.

The movie earned ten awards at Mexico’s Oscars, the Ariel Awards, including Best Picture, and a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Like Water for Chocolate was the highest-grossing foreign language film shown in the U.S. up to that time. It remains at #10.

The Old Gringo, by Carlos Fuentes (1985)
Film: Old Gringo (1989, written by Aida Bortnik and Luis Puenzo, directed by Puenzo)

Carlos Fuentes is undoubtedly one of the most influential and universally respected authors in Mexican literature. In his obituary, the New York Times described Fuentes as “one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world” and an important influence on the “Latin American Boom,” the “explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and ’70s.” Fuentes was often regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature, but sadly, as with Javier Marías and Philip Roth, an untimely death intervened.

The Old Gringo was more successful as a novel than the film, which starred Gregory Peck, Jane Fonda, and Jimmy Smits. Fuentes has said, “What started this novel was my admiration for [American journalist Ambrose Bierce] and for his Tales of Soldiers and Civilians [orig. pub. 1892]. I was fascinated with the idea of a man who fought in the United States Civil War and dies in a Mexican civil war.”

And that is exactly what Fuentes gives us in this exciting historical and tragic chapter in Mexican history.

Pedro Páramo, by Juan Rulfo (1955)
Film: Pedro Páramo (1967, written by Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, and Manuel Barbachano Ponce; directed by Carlos Velo.

Pedro Páramo is THE classic novel of Mexican literature; remarkably, it was Rulfo’s first novel.

“I came to Comala because I was told that my father, a certain Pedro Páramo, lived here. My mother told me this. And I promised her that I would come to see him as soon as she died.” Every Mexican knows these opening sentences of the novel.

Writers like Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, and Susan Sontag cite Pedro Páramo as one of the most significant works of literature of all time. A survey of writers and students worldwide by the Nobel Prize Institute of Sweden included it as one of the 100 works that constitute the core of the universal heritage of literature.

Gabriel García Márquez claimed he could recite the entire book cover to cover, demonstrating the importance of this short novel in his own writing.

The story appears to be straightforward: a man returning to a once-thriving city that now appears to be ghost town, along with the people who inhabit it. But it is Rulfo’s nonlinear style and form that capture the essence of the tale. You may find yourself confused – which characters are dead, which alive? Time shifts, as does the flow of memory, as we are absorbed into the world of Pedro Páramo.

Ironically, the book sold very few copies when published, and fame came only later. You can view the film on Netflix; to this day, it receives excellent reviews, though most viewers suggest you read the book first. A new version of the film has been produced by Netflix; written by Mateo Gil and directed by Rodrigo Prieto, it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. It will be released on Netflix later this year.

Hurricane Season, by Fernanda Melchor (2017)
Film: Hurricane Season (2023, written by Melchor, Daniela Gómez, and Elisa Miller; directed by Elisa Miller)

The death of a witch is a hell of a way to begin a novel. But Fernanda Melchor knows just where she’s going with a story that takes place in a small village in coastal Veracruz.

Written in a Faulkneresque style (Melchor abhors periods) with a touch of Chilean author Roberto Bolaño, the novel recounts in a “linguistic torrent” and hypnotic rhythm the story of how and why the witch lived and died in a desperately poor little Mexican town. Most reviews recognize Melchor’s command of the language in her use of rough language to describe violence and depravity and her ability to express pain and despair. Equal praise has been showered on her English translator, Sophie Hughes.

The story is told by four “unreliable narrators,” that is, people who have only a partial, often distorted, view of what’s going on as local citizens attempt to determine who killed the witch and how to handle the extreme evil lurking everywhere.

To give you an example of the popularity of this novel, I am currently on a 20-week waitlist for the English translation. You can view the equally regarded film on Netflix.

“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.” – Carl Sagan