I know that I mentioned back in September that I wanted to plan out a pile of reads for #HispanicHeritageMonth / #LatinxHeritageMonth. And I did. It turns out I had quite a few books sitting on my TBR pile that were written by Latinx or Hispanic authors, so I decided to crank out as many of them as I could read during this one month period (spoiler: I’m not going to get through them all). So without anymore blathering, here’s my first read of the month, Mexican Gothic!
Edition:
Hardcover
Synopsis:
An isolated mansion. A chillingly charismatic aristocrat. And a brave socialite drawn to expose their treacherous secrets. . . .
From the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow comes a novel set in glamorous 1950s Mexico.
After receiving a frantic letter from her newlywed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find – her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.
Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.
Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.
And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.
Additional Info:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “It’s Lovecraft meets the Brontës in Latin America, and after a slow-burn start Mexican Gothic gets seriously weird.”—The Guardian
IN DEVELOPMENT AS A HULU ORIGINAL LIMITED SERIES PRODUCED BY KELLY RIPA AND MARK CONSUELOS (OMGGGGG)
My Thoughts:
You’ve likely heard plenty about this book by now. You’re likely going to hear more about it. Especially when we hit awards season. It definitely lives up to the hype. I love a good gothic tale, and Moreno-Garcia more than delivers one.
This has all the rot, ruin, and rampant gaslighting a girl could hope for. High Place is basically a gothic wonderland. By which I mean it is a moldering manor filled to overflowing with weird happenings and weirder residents.
And Noemí. Oh, Noemí. I loved her so much. She’s very much your typical gothic heroine in that she is an upper-class young woman who is very much beloved by those around her who also happens to be naturally beautiful, graceful, and relatively good at everything she does. She’s gregarious, playful, flirty, and a bit flighty. She is confident in herself and her abilities. She is also very different in that here she is not (at least initially) the subject of the conspiracy – that is her cousin Catalina whom she travels to High Place to assist and/or rescue. And she’s smart – she’s clever, she’s street-smart, and she’s just so god damned charming. She’s the kind of lady a noir detective would fall for, and rightly so. I was very pleasantly surprised by how well-developed as a character she was. She’s definitely deeper and more introspective than your average gothic heroine.
“She wanted to be liked. Perhaps this explained the parties, the crystalline laughter, the well-coiffed hair, the rehearsed smile. She thought that men such as her father could be stern and men could be cold like Virgil, but women needed to be liked or they’d be in trouble. A woman who is not liked is a bitch, and a bitch can hardly do anything: all avenues are closed to her.”
There is also an abundance of rather disturbing body horror, which you might know by now is another one of my horror weaknesses. Put body horror in bed with gothic tropes and I am tucked up in there for the duration. I’m in my happy place.
This story gripped me right from the start and never let me go. I actually wish it would have gone on longer (solely because I still wanted to be reading it – it definitely had an appropriate amount of story and resolution).
Anyway, I loved this book so, so much. It’s creepy, occasionally sort of gross, and it’s gothic AF.
About the Author:
Mexican by birth, Canadian by inclination. Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s debut novel, Signal to Noise, about music and magic, won a Copper Cylinder Award. Her second novel, Certain Dark Things, focused on narco vampires in Mexico City. It was one of NPR’s best books of 2016.Gods of Jade and Shadow was the 2020 American Library Association Reading List winner in the Fantasy category and won the 2020 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic.
She has edited several anthologies, including She Walks in Shadows (World Fantasy Award winner, published in the USA as Cthulhu’s Daughters), Fungi, Dead North and others. Silvia is the publisher of Innsmouth Free Press. She co-edited the horror magazine The Dark with Sean Wallace from 2017 to 2020. She’s a columnist for The Washington Post and reviews books for NPR.
She has an MA in Science and Technology Studies from the University of British Columbia. Her thesis can be read online and is titled “Magna Mater: Women and Eugenic Thought in the Work of H.P. Lovecraft.”
(from the author’s website)
Rating:
I have to go out now and get everything else Silvia Moreno-Garcia has ever written.
Mexican Gothic By Silvia Moreno-Garcia Del Rey Books ISBN: 0525620788 Published: June 30, 2020 Hardcover, E-book, Audiobook 301 Pages Author's Website Publisher's Website
I can’t wait to dive into this one!!