David Lida�s work is oddly dark. The topics of his short stories are not those one would ordinarily connect with the traveler�s Mexico, and yet they are intimately Mexican. His characters are not nice or even necessarily very interesting, but as he tells their strange stories, Lida creates an atmosphere every one of us will recognize. In weaving his plots, he incorporates feelings all of us have had. In �Bewitched,� his American journalist frets over the hidden meaning behind slow service and her enigmatic maid. She even behaves badly, as some of us have in moments of frustration. �Taxi,� �Free Trade,� and �A Beach Day� perversely examine the fears we have all occasionally felt, and perhaps even experienced, as we have moved through Mexico.  

For those of us who view Mexico as a romantic, colorful, essentially benign destination, these disturbing stories will forever shatter our illusions. Those of us who have experienced vague unidentified anxieties during our travels � in spite of never having had anything bad happen to us � will forever look more carefully around us after reading these tales. I scoffed initially � Lida�s Mexicans are not those I meet when I travel � but after some thought, I realized that Lida had totally captured the mixed emotions that are such a critical component of my fascination with Mexico. His work will never be considered uplifting or his subject matter ordinary travelers� fare, but his strangely evocative writing is indeed a travel advisory, warning us that what you see isn�t necessarily all you get.  

Escape to Mexico is a collection of fiction from some of the world�s greatest authors, writers who at some point found refuge and inspiration in Mexico and then included their impressions and experiences in their work. Some of the excerpts are totally familiar � Harriet Doerr�s Stones for Ibarra, The Night of The Iguana by Tennessee Williams, Malcom Lowry�s Under the Volcano, Jack Kerouac�s On the Road � others are less so. The remarkable aspect of this book is the many different perspectives of its contributors. Some of the offerings are contemporary, many are not. Some are amusing, most are not. A few evoke the atmosphere and places of Mexico, some are only set in generic Mexican towns. This book�s special gift is its contrast � the melodious language of Dashka Slater�s �Wishing Box� next to the disjointed grammatical nonsense of Kerouac, the desperate evocative mist of Tennessee Williams� Miss Jelkes alongside the sardonic cruelty of Sherwood Anderson�s narrator in �Mexican Nigh,t� Wallace Stegner�s essential images of a Mexican home versus Anais Nin �Collages,� which could have been set anywhere.   

If I were compiling an anthology of writing done in and about Mexico, I�m not sure I would have chosen all of the offerings included here. I enjoyed some much more than others. These pieces reflect many different attitudes towards Mexico and her people, both positive and negative. However, if the purpose of the collection is to illustrate the impact Mexico has had on a group of very diverse writers, it has been admirably fulfilled, and it is always of interest to me to match such impact against my own.  

It is possible that these three works should not be read one after the other as I read them. The contrasting approaches and impressions left my brain swimming. On the other hand, while total immersion is often shocking and occasionally unpleasant, it almost always leads to an expanded way of looking at things. In this case, it was much like spending time in Mexico � sometimes exhilarating, sometimes annoying, sometimes relaxing, sometimes an adventure, sometimes amusing, sometimes frustrating, sometimes downright disagreeable, but never, ever a bore.