Aura by Carlos Fuentes is a short fantasy novel that depicts dreamlike events to project youth and old age. Montero, a historian, visits a widow after he sees an advertisement in a newspaper that describes the kind of person required to organize and finish the memories of the widow’s deceased husband. When Montero reads the description, he finds such a strong connection and thinks it is the perfect description of him, save a name.
He visits the widow’s dark house and the widow is lying in her bed in her room. There he meets, Aura, the widow’s young niece, and gets intrigued by her. The only condition to take the job is to live in the house, and even though it is a well-paid job, he doubts it, but after meeting Aura, he decides to take it. He spends the night thinking about her. The next day when he was working on the widow’s late husband’s journals, he found out about the widow’s obsession with youth, her infertility, and her wish of having a child. Throughout the day, he couldn’t get Aura out of his head.
Over a few days, he realized a strange connection between the widow and Aura. Aura’s lips slightly moved when the widow spoke and she made the same gestures as the widow. He also finds a strange connection between himself and the memories of the dead general. Montero eventually falls in love with Aura but notices that she is not free and cannot leave her aunt. Montero, one day, enters Aura’s room when she is in her bed and holds her in bed. When Aura and Felipe were together, the young Aura suddenly turned into the widow and Montero became the widow’s deceased husband. Thus, the entire story is a connection between the young and the old couple. The young couple, Aura and Montero, reflect the youthfulness of the widow and her husband. That is why Montero was so strongly connected to his journals.
