Rating: ★★★★★
Author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Title: Mexican Gothic
ISBN: 9780525620785
Genre: Horror, Historical Fiction
Publisher: Random House Worlds, 2020
Page Count: 320 pages
Synopsis from Publisher: After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemà 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 Noemà knows little about the region.
Noemà 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 NoemÃ; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom. And NoemÃ, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.
Mexican Gothic is a beautiful and horrific read. From the illustrations that Moreno-Garcia invoked, to the motifs and symbolism between the pages, to the actual horrors of the setting. You spend so much time ingratiated in this strange tale, walking through this strange house, conversing with this strange family, I almost didn't see it coming when the genre revealed itself. Each step through High Place felt haunting, but the narration writhed underneath NoemÃ's judgement. Each character seemed to be churning with something, but you mistake it for prejudiced tensions. The story pulsates with so much more.
Ordinarily, I would go through beat by beat what I loved about this book, but I worry that anything I share too much of will ruin the reveal for someone else. For once, I think I'll abstain from a review with spoilers. But it's been a while in horror that I've felt so gratified.
The pieces of what was truly going on were always there. Why the house felt so sick. Why the Doyles seemed so guarded. A letter from Catalina reveals images of the ouroboros, foul soil, a spider and its web, and voices. So much feels like the delusions of a woman ravaged by the failings of her own mind. So much of it dismissible but highly concerning.
That is until Noemà starts to feel this, too.
You're forced to reckon with a perspective of a charming, intelligent protagonist who you've trusted this far into the story. You're forced to consider how she can start seeing the same hideous and venomous things in her dreams as Catalina's ill letters professed.
Some of the imagery was so vile, I could hardly imagine it as the words carried me through it. And the family, run by a patriarch who was falling apart at the seams, delighting in racist literature of the past and profiting meekly off of the family's colonial efforts in a foreign country... It's not hard to see why the ouroboros later is intensely described as alabaster white. How this family can profit off the backs of people of color for decades, infiltrating native, settled spaces, claiming to build an empire for the region only to take all of it for themselves. All the while, the family becomes its own undoing--a snake eating its own tail.
This story is so much more than horror, it's layered with the torments of real oppressive behaviors and the crumbling of an empire due to neglect, abuse, and a Revolution where a family of British immigrants couldn't center themselves as the cause or the hero. How, in spite of their toxic spread, even they can lose it all. The parallels to the likes of Jane Eyre was appreciated and seen.
(I love Jane Eyre, so I was so happy to see it and stories like Rebecca's influence here.)
I truly hope you read this book and you love it as much as I do.
