FRIDA'S COOK

A lively new fictional take on Frida Kahlo.

In her first novel to be published in English, Argentinian journalist and detective novelist Etcheves imagines into being Nayeli Cruz, a Tehuana who leaves her home in a small village at age 14 in 1939 and makes her way to Mexico City, where Frida Kahlo, in her 30s, recently separated from Diego Rivera and well-saturated with brandy, sees her in the street, believes her to be the “imaginary friend” of her childhood—a cheerful ballerina—and invites her to come inside and become her cook. In snappy little chapters, Etcheves alternates this story with one that takes place in 2018 in Buenos Aires. Here, Nayeli has just died and her granddaughter, Paloma, discovers that she’s left her a mysterious painting, a nude figure of Nayeli as a young woman with a red splotch that resembles a ballerina in the corner. The author throws herself into the story of Nayeli, Frida, and Diego with abandon, if not subtlety. She uses the already vivid details of the artists’ lives, but isn’t afraid to branch out from them, hinting at ways in which Nayeli may have inspired her employer, or to amp up the drama: “Love and passion devastated Frida; they drove her towards the abyss,” she writes. The contemporary section of the novel is even more convoluted, complete with art forgers, murderers, estranged parents and children, a beautiful older woman connected with Nayeli’s past, and a whole series of double-crosses. Fans of Kahlo’s work might be put off by the borderline caricatured depiction of her here, but the novelist’s breezily complicated plot will keep readers turning pages.

A colorful if melodramatic tribute to a fascinating figure.