Frida

Frida, by Barbar Mujica. New York: Overlook, 2001.

In her intriguing new novel Frida, Barbara Mujica has given us a captivating fictionalized biography. Frida captures the private and public worlds of the Mexican painter, Frida Kahlo, who was famous for her eccentric creativity, her narcissistic self-dramatization, her gutsy perseverance, and her traumatic life. Mujuica'a well-crafted verbal portrait of this modern self-portraitist, "Whose brows form a bird in flight" will haunt the memories of her readers long after they finish this compelling novel.

As historically knowledgeable as she is pshychologically insightful, Mujica sets Frida's personal story within the broader political and artistic context of Mexico in the first half of the twentieth century. This period of history enlivens the narrative, with figures like Leon Trotsky, John D. Rockefeller, Edsel Ford, Dolores Del Rio, Maria Felix, and Pualette Goddard appearing at appropriate moments. But it is the central sotry of the complicated sibling relationship between Frida and her younger sister by eleven months, Cristina, that tantalizes the imagination.

In life, Frida took center stage, while Cristi hovered in the wings as her understudy, but in her...