You are reading this title

When I read the first few pages of Aura, I was very uncomfortable and disconcerted by the narration of the story.  Fuentes narrates the story with the pronoun "you", as though the reader is the main character.  I couldn't stand ready the story this way at first, and refrained from aligning myself with the main character.  In part this is because the main character is a guy, but as well I found the difficulty in accepting the obscurity of Fuentes writing.  I am so used to reading books as an outsider, looking in and analyzing the material unbiasedly.  Fuentes challenges this method of writing.  After reading a good chunk of the book I began to accept the alignment of myself and the reader, and felt as though Fuentes was talking directly to me.  This brought a new sense of understanding and point of view that I had never really experienced in reading before.  My acceptance of the "you" was gradual and done so some what subconsciously.  Fuentes refers to the reader as the main character so often that eventually I was believing that I am a historian, I do work for an old woman in a dark house, and I am in love with Aura.