Margarita Wednesdays, Deborah Rodriguez

Margarita Wednesdays: Making a New Life by the Mexican Sea

Deborah Rodriguez

Category: Nonfiction: Memoir: Living Abroad, Mexico

Synopsis: Having fled Afghanistan, Rodriguez finds herself looking for another adventure.

Date finished: 19 August 2014

Rating: ****

Comments:

I adored Deborah Rodriguez’s Kabul Beauty School. It’s one of my favorite books about that part of the world, and I’ve read a lot of them. After leaving Afghanistan—and her ill-fated marriage and beloved beauty school—for safety reasons, Rodriguez finds herself without a country to call home. She returns to America, but she’s depressed and listless. Until she plans her next big adventure: moving to Mexico.

I say this with all due respect, but Rodriguez is one flaky woman. She attracts (and marries) only the wrong kind, she flits around the world, hopping from continent to continent, her relationships with family members are rather unreliable. But then again, she’s also adventurous, fun-loving, willing to take risks. While Kabul Beauty School was a much more serious book, and showed Rodriguez in a more responsible light, this book was good in a different way. It’s a good summer read for those of us who are too set in our ways to pick up and leave the country, and live vicariously through those who are more adventurous.

So, in all, I enjoyed the adventure with Rodriguez, and hope that when she leaves Mexico (which I have to imagine she will), she’ll write about her next stop in life.

As an aside, Rodriguez is not Latina, she just writes under a former name. In case that makes any difference to you. Don’t expect a Mexican woman finding her Mexican roots, that’s not what this book is about.

Would you recommend this to a friend?

Yes, if she can appreciate the story for what it is.

You might also enjoy:

Kabul Beauty School
The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry