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Book Review: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Del Rey, 2020

ISBN: 9780525620785

Available: Hardcover, Paperback, Audiobook, Kindle

 

In 1950’s Mexico, Noemi, a flirtatious, intelligent fashionista, decides her cousin Catalina has been out of touch for too long.  When Noemi receives a disturbing letter from Catalina suggesting that she might want to escape from her new marriage, Noemi packs her gorgeous wardrobe and heads to isolated High Place, the ancestral home of the English Doyles, to investigate.

Ever the realist, skeptical of her cousin’s fairytale princess notions about marriage, Noemi immediately distrusts her suave brother-in-law. She soon realizes that he is evil, and so is his menacing house that has wallpaper “slippery, like a strained muscle” and walls like “sickly organs” with “veins and arteries clogged with secret excesses.” Something is not right at High Place, and Noemi starts to feel its curse invading her mind and body, slowly but surely, just as it has infected her cousin.

What begins as a poetic, gothic fairytale, becomes a wild blend of fantasy, horror, and science-fiction in Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. The Doyle men and women have preserved their family line by choosing between “fit and unfit people.” The men wield their power by practicing eugenics through a weird and totally terrifying combination of sexual abuse, drugs, intimidation, and psychological control. The house has an actual heartbeat that is pulsing with mold, fungus and rot, and the creepy family patriarch, an ugly man full of secrets and disgusting tumors, sores, and black bile, is directing and insuring the family’s future from his deathbed. Murders have occurred at High Place, and strange epidemics have killed droves of workers in the family’s silver mine. Once Noemi has the facts, she knows she must fight and use her wits  to survive and save the people she cares about before the evil overcomes them and traps them in a living hell forever.

Although the book seems set in a period later than the 50’s in terms Noemi’s language and sensibility, it still is, in more than one sense, a horror story that reflects the historically violent subjugation of women used as breeders in families and cultures obsessed with lineage and legacy. Religion, status, and seclusion frequently became barriers to freedom for these women by preventing them from making choices about the direction of their own lives. The women of Mexican Gothic cope with horrible suffering and mirror the superhuman strength it took for real women to endure, and sometimes find rare opportunities to escape, the nightmarish situations forced on their gender. Highly Recommended.

Contains: gore, sexual situations, profanity, incest, body horror

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Editor’s note: Mexican Gothic is a nominee on the final ballot for the 2020 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel. 

 

Posted on March 1, 2021 by , Reply

Musings: The Same Old Arguments About H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft was a racist.

It’s not an argument we are going to have here. He was a racist, and it’s clear as it can be from his writing that he was racist, misogynistic, and anti-Semitic.

I often hear apologists say “He wasn’t any worse than anyone else at the time.”  That’s a terrible argument. Other people being racists at the same time doesn’t excuse Lovecraft– it just shows that an appalling number of people were racist.

I’ve actually seen someone compare him to Abraham Lincoln (I’m totally willing to say that Lincoln was not an angel, and he certainly held racist beliefs. But that’s one of the most bizarre comparisons I’ve ever come across). Lincoln’s racism isn’t an excuse for anyone else’s racist beliefs, either.

Also, can we please get past the idea that people who object to Lovecraft’s racism are destroying literature? Or that any literature belongs to any one person?  Lovecraftian fiction is more popular than it’s ever been, and his racism isn’t stopping a lot of people from reading and enjoying it, or even writing it.  And authors and publishers who address the problematic nature of Lovecraft’s work are producing some amazing work. Victor Lavalle’s The Ballad of Black Tom, a response to The Horror at Red Hook, received rave reviews.  Silvia Moreno-Garcia at Innsmouth Free Press, published and co-edited She Walks in Shadows, an award-winning anthology of Lovecraftian fiction.

I’m not a fan of Lovecraft at all, but I don’t think Lovecraft’s work should be banned, or shoved under the table. Just because he wrote about shadowy creatures doesn’t mean he and his work should be hidden. He existed, and regardless of what you, or I, or anyone else, think of him,  he made tremendous contributions to horror literature, and his mythos, at least, has solidly embedded itself in mainstream culture.  As individuals, we can each decide whether his problematic attitudes toward race, women, and Jews are enough to keep us from reading his work or even loving it. But they shouldn’t be forced on anyone.

But this back-and-forth on “is Lovecraft a racist” is taking the focus away from some really brilliant writers who have already recognized that he is problematic, and are facing that head-on. Let’s see how far-reaching the diversity and creativity of today’s writers of Lovecraftian fiction can take us as we acknowledge his racist past.

 

 

Posted on September 3, 2017 by , Reply

Book Review: Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia


 
Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Thomas Dunne Books, 2016
ISBN-13: 978-1250099082
Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, Audible
 

Certain Dark Things is an excellent example of what a vampire novel can be. The characters are strong, the writing is fast-paced, and it paints a vision of a world we have not seen before. There is a ton of vampire fiction out there, much of it unreadable, but Silvia Moreno-Garcia brings a fresh take to the genre in this page-turner.

In the world of Certain Dark Things, the existence of vampires became public knowledge in 1969. Slowly, the vampires have become a part of society. There are a variety of species and sub-species of vampires, and many have evolved geographically and culturally. Reading it, there is a sense that we are seeing just the tip of the iceberg. The book comes with a glossary which explains the ins and outs of the vampires and their history. I found this unnecessary, and only referred to it once. Many of the details listed at the back of the book have little bearing on this story, but it is clear the author has this whole world thought out in great detail. World-building is clearly one of the book’s great strengths.

Domingo is a homeless teenager surviving on the streets of Mexico City, whose life changes hen he meets Alt, a vampire that comes from a Aztec background. Alt’s biology requires that she feed from the young, but she doesn’t have to kill to feed. Domingo is fascinated with her: he has read about vampires, but never met one. Although gangs of vampires and drug cartels battle beyond the city limits, within Mexico City, vampires are illegal. Why would Alt risk coming to Mexico City? This is what drives the narrative.

The novel is well structured. Moreno-Garcia uses multiple points of view, switching easily between them. Character development is also impressive. Ana, the police detective, has a story interesting enough to carry its own novel. Watching Domingo fall deeper and deeper for Alt, readers learn just how inhuman she is. Some of the strongest moments of the book happen between them.

Moreno-Garcia isn’t the first to write about Mexican vampires, but every dark fiction author deserves a chance to put their spin on the creature, using the unique set of tools they bring to the table, and she has created a clever and original story.  We can only hope she will choose to return to this world with a sequel. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by David Agranoff


Posted on December 20, 2016 by , Reply
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